
Class _7_Izlj: 
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COFXRIGHT DEPOSm 



SELECTIONS FROM THE 
PROSE OF MACAULAY 



EDITED BY 

LUCIUS HUDSON HOLT, Ph D 

LIEUTENANT COLONEL, UNITED STATES ARMY 
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND HISTORY 
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY LUCIUS HUDSON HOLT 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






^v 




SEP -7 1916 



CINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



^CI,A437575 



PREFACE 

These selections are chosen from the entire range of 
Macaulay's prose works with the exception of his speeches. 
Although the speeches were edited for publication, some of 
their individual characteristics of phrase and form were 
obviously intended for oral rather than for written expression. 
It is believed, therefore, that by restricting these selections to 
those compositions especially produced for the reading public, 
the best and most typical of Macaulay's literary work has 
been included. 

Lovers of Macaulay will undoubtedly miss some of their 
favorite Essays, — as, for example, the study of Bacon and the 
brilliant interpretation of Machiavelli's character and period, — 
but it is certain that the selections included will familiarize 
the reader with the breadth and variety of Macaulay's 
interests and the excellences of his style. 

L. H. H. 

West Point, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. Life of Macaulay 
II. Personal Characteristics 
III. Macaulay's Prose Works 

Milton i 

Review of Joaruiis Afiltotn, Angli^ de Doctriiid Christiana 
libri duo posthunii. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled 
from the Holy Scriptures alone. By John Milton, translated from 
the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., 1825. The essay 
appeared in the Edi)ibu7'gh Reviezu for August, 1825. 

History 55 

From an essay by this title which appeared in the EdinburgJi 
Review for May, 1 828 ; suggested by Tlie Romance of History : 
England. By Henry Neele. London, 1828. 

Byron 66 

From a review of Letters atid Jotirnals of Lo7-d Byron j with 
Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore, Esq. 2 vols., 4to. Lon- 
don, 1830. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Revieiu for 
June, 1 83 1. 

Samuel Johnson 92 

From a review of TJie Life of Samuel foiinson^ LL.D. Lnclud- 
ing a fournal of a Tour to the Hebrides., by fames Boswell, 
Esq. A new Edition with nufnerous Additions and Notes. 
By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols., 8vo. London, 
1 83 1. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for 
September, 1831. 

John Bunyan 122 

From a review of The Pilgri7n''s P?vgress, with a Life of foJui 
Bunyan. By Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D., Poet Laureate. Illus- 
trated with Engravings. 8vo. London, 1831. The essay 
appeared in the Edinburgh Review for December, 1831. 

Lord Clive 135 

From a review of The Life of Robert Lord Clive j collected from 
the Fa7nily Papers., comfHU?iicated by the Earl of Powis. By 



vi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

PAGE 

Major-General Sir John Malcolm, K.C.B. 3 vols., 8vo. London, 
1836. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for 
January, 1840. 

Warren Hastings 188 

From a review of Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastitigs, 
first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original 
Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A. 3 vols., 8vo. London, 
1 841. The essay appeared in the Edinbufgh Review for 
October, 1841. 

Frederic the Great 233 

From a review of Frederic the G?'eat and his Ti/nes. Edited, 
with an Introduction, by Thomas Campbell, Esq. 2 vols., 8vo. 
London, 1 842. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review 
for April, 1842. 

Addison 287 

From a review of The Life of foseph Addisott. By Lucy Aikin. 
2 vols., 8vo. London, 1843. The essay appeared in the 
Edinburgh Re-view for July, 1843. 

History of England 353 

Vols. I and II published in 1848; Vols. Ill and IV, 1855; 
Vol. V (edited by Lady Trevelyan), 1861. 

{a) William and Mary. (From Chapter VII.) 353 

{b) Invitation to William. (From Chapter IX.) 366 

{c) Revolution of 1688. (From Chapter X.) 379 

(^) William and Mary in England. (From Chapter XL) . , 391 

(e) The Toleration Act. (From Chapter XI.) 396 

(/) The Relief of Londonderry. (From Chapter XII.) . . . 401 

(,<;) The King's Touch for Scrofula. (From Chapter XIV.) . . 414 
(//) Rise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption. (From 

Chapter XV.) 417 

(/) The Bank of England. (From Chapter XX.) 422 

(/) The Death of Mary. (From Chapter XX.) 435 

{k) (From Macaulay's notes, revised by him.) The A'isit of Peter 

the Great to London. (From Chapter XXIII.) . . . 441 

(/) (From Macaulay's notes, not revised by him.) The Death of 

William. (From Chapter XXV.) 449 



INTRODUCTION 



LIFE OF MACAULAY 

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leices- 
tershire, October 25, 1800, the first of the children of Zachary 
Macaulay and Selina (Mills) Macaulay. 

Zachary Macaulay had already made his mark in that devoted 
band which did so much at the end of the eighteenth century to 
arouse public opinion in England against the continuation of the 
slave trade. He had been sent as a boy of sixteen to Jamaica to 
become a bookkeeper in the Jamaican office of a Scotch business 
firm, had become thoroughly disgusted with slavery by his enforced 
contact with conditions in the colony, surrendered his position after 
eight years of toil, and in 1792 returned to England with little money, 
no work, but unalterable convictions with respect to the iniquity of 
slavery. Always a man of singleness of purpose, he could see before 
him only the duty of throwing himself heart and soul into the aboli- 
tionist cause. Opportunity presented itself in the carrying out of a 
Utopian scheme for a colony at Sierra Leone to be peopled by liber- 
ated slaves. Zachary Macaulay accepted the post of member of the 
council in the far-away colony, became governor, toiled unceasingly 
and self-sacrificingly against every conceivable obstacle and disap- 
pointment, and at last, in 1799, after six long years, resigned his 
position and returned to England. Almost immediately he was ap- 
pointed secretary for the Sierra Leone company, a position which 
yielded him a comfortable income in return for much hard work in 
the company's business. 

Selina Mills, to whom Zachary Macaulay was married August 26, 
1799, was of a Quaker family of Bristol. As a girl she was pretty 

^ The facts and citations herein given are in the main taken from the 
authoritative " Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," written by his nephew, 
G. Otto Trevelyan. 



viii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and attractive ; as a woman she was dignified and sensible. She was 
a most excellent wife and mother, devoted to her stern husband even 
during those later years when his interest in abolition had apparently 
absorbed every other interest in his life, ruling her children with for- 
bearance and tact and inspiring within them the deepest affection. 

We have attractive descriptions of the home in which Macaulay 
spent his youth. Younger brothers and sisters, five altogether, looked 
up to "Tom" as their leader in fun. His sister writes in later years: 
" His unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his 
amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes and 
his tastes were our law. . . . My earliest recollections speak of the 
intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with finding him in papa's 
room in the morning ; the awe at the idea of his having reached home 
in the dark after we were in bed, and the Saturnalia which at once 
set in ; no lessons ; nothing but fun and merriment for the whole six 
weeks." And yet this boy who was at the head of the fun in his 
home had from an early age shown notable signs of precocity, 
" From the time he was three years old," writes his nephew and 
biographer, Trevelyan, " he read incessantly, for the most part lying 
on the rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a piece 
of bread-and-butter in his hand." When he was but eight years old 
he undertook to write a compendium of the world's history and actu- 
ally gave a coherent account of the great events from the creation 
to his own time. Inspired by Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
he started a poem called " The Battle of Cheviot," finished nearly 
four hundred lines, and dropped it to compose an heroic poem 
entitled " Olaus the Great ; or. The Conquest of Mona." Naturally 
enough, the strict religious atmosphere of his home caused him to 
turn to hymn writing, also, and many of his productions were treas- 
ured by his mother during her whole life. Macaulay's precocity, how- 
ever, did not lead him to love the regular curriculum in his schools. 
He read continually, wrote persistently, but protested against going 
to school. His mother's kindly insistence forced him to school daily, 
overruling all excuses and pleadings. Indeed, too much credit cannot 
be given to the judicious care which his fond mother gave him : 
his evident precocity did not gain him the " spoiling " which might 
have followed ; his tastes were directed ; his compositions criticized ; 
his tendencies to haste and carelessness curbed. Another influence 



INTRODUCTION ix 

during his boyhood which may have played a significant part in the 
direction of his later life was the household discussion of political ques- 
tions of the day. To be sure, the discussions in which his father 
was so interested were mainly connected with the abolitionist move- 
ment, still they accustomed the boy to the thought of politics and 
opened to his active mind the methods by which political schemes 
were conceived and carried through. Yet, all in all, it must be ad- 
mitted that Macaulay was not a boy's boy. He did not like dogs, 
bird's-nesting, shooting, outdoor games, and the like. Leader of fun 
as he was at home, he directed the play along those channels that 
appealed to him most. " His notion of perfect happiness was to see 
us all working round him," writes his sister, " while he read aloud 
a novel." Capping verses, acting the scenes in books read, were 
favorite amusements with him even when he had become a grown 
young man. He had a very happy boyhood, but it was not that of 
a normal boy. 

In the fall of 1818 Macaulay matriculated at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. In after years Macaulay's passionate love for his college 
was one of his striking characteristics. He did not do well in the 
academic work, failing to get honors, his failure being due largely to 
his detestation of the mathematical studies which formed such an 
essential part of the curriculum. " I can scarcely bear to write on 
mathematics or mathematicians," he once said in a letter from col- 
lege. " Oh for words to express my abomination of that science, if 
a name sacred to the useful and embellishing arts may be applied to 
the perception and recollection of certain properties in numbers and 
figures. . . . ' Discipline ' of the mind ! Say rather starvation, con- 
finement, torture, annihilation 1 " The comparative freedom of the 
college life, however, gave him the opportunity to indulge his love of 
society and his passion for reading. His genius for conversation and 
argument drew around him a brilliant group, the two Coleridges 
(Derwent and Henry), Villiers, Grey, Romilly, Praed, and Austin. 
" So long as a door was open or a light burning in any of the courts," 
writes Trevelyan, " Macaulay was always in the mood for conversa- 
tion and companionship. ... It must have been well worth the loss 
of sleep to hear Macaulay plying Austin with sarcasms upon the 
doctrine of the ' Greatest Happiness,' ^ which then had still some 

1 Referring to the practical philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. 



X SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

gloss of novelty ; putting into an ever-fresh shape the time-honored 
jokes against the Johnians for the benefit of the Villierses ; and 
urging an interminable debate on Wordsworth's merits as a poet, in 
which the Coleridges, as in duty bound, were ever ready to engage. 
In this particular field he acquired a skill of fence which rendered 
him the most redoubtable of antagonists." Although he made no 
mark in the academic work, he succeeded better, as might have been 
expected, in debating and in literary work. He was a prominent 
figure in the debates of the Cambridge Union, he once gained the 
prize for Latin declamation, and twice the chancellor's medal for 
English verse. In spite of his failure to attain a high rank in the 
mathematical work, he received a university scholarship in 182 1 and 
was appointed a fellow in 1824. Looking back upon his college 
career in the last years of his life, he once wrote : " If a man brings 
away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits 
of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had 
made a display of showy Etonian scholarship, got three or four 
Brown's medals, and gone forth into the world a school-boy, and 
doomed to be a school-boy to the last, , . . But I often regret, and 
even acutely, my want of a senior wrangler's knowledge of physics 
and mathematics ; and I regret still more some habits of mind which 
a senior wrangler is pretty certain to possess." 

In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar. He went upon the 
Northern Circuit, but never took his legal work seriously. He had 
already achieved a success in literature which tempted him from the 
law, and had further conceived a strong interest in politics. The time 
which, had he intended himself for success in law, he should have 
spent in legal studies, he occupied in writing and in absorbed contem- 
plation of the procedure in the House of Commons from a seat in 
the galleries. 

Macaulay, while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge, had 
contributed liberally to the magazines. From 1823 on his articles had 
been accepted. In 1825 he was immensely pleased with an invitation 
to write an article for the great liberal periodical, the Edinburgh 
Review. His response to this invitation was his essay on Milton, ap- 
pearing in August of the same year. No more immediate fame has 
been achieved by a literary man : the value of the article was recog- 
nized and interest in its author aroused. Invitations poured in upon 



INTRODUCTION xi 

him from all sides. He became, at the age of twenty-five, the 
literary lion of London. 

He was at this time a somewhat pudgy, unhandsome young man, 
vehement and overconfident in conversation, but blessed with an 
abounding good nature which won him many friends. Praed, writing 
of him, says : " There came up a short manly figure, marvellously 
upright, with a bad neck cloth, and one hand in his waistcoat-pocket. 
Of regular beauty he had little to boast ; but in faces where there is 
an expression of great power, or of great good-humor, or both, you 
do not regret its absence." In conversation he tended to assume the 
lead, confident of his own powers. Robinson, who met him about 
this time, jots down in his diary : "I had a most interesting compan- 
ion in young Macaulay, one of the most promising of the rising gen- 
eration I have seen for a long time. . . . Very eloquent and cheerful. 
Overflowing with words and not poor in thought." 

Just at this period Macaulay's father, who had spent his strength 
utterly in the antislavery cause to the neglect of his commercial in- 
terests, found himself heavily involved financially. The sufficient 
income which had so long supported the large family was checked, 
Zachary Macaulay was in no condition to straighten out his affairs 
and rebuild his fortune, and his son, who had lived in the expectation 
of a comfortable patrimony, suddenly faced the prospect of assuming 
the burden of support of his family. His attitude at this juncture is 
one of the best commentaries on his character. With perfect cheer- 
fulness he took up the task, planning to pay his father's debts, clear 
up the tangle, and set himself in a way to rehabilitate the family 
fortune. He was at the time in receipt of the income from his college 
fellowship, amounting to about three hundred pounds a year, of an 
amount from his contributions to the Editilmrgh Revie7v equal to as 
much more, and a few hundred pounds additional from occasional 
offices and literary work. This income was insufficient, however, for 
the comfortable maintenance of the family and the payment of his 
father's debts. He cast about, therefore, for a career which might 
give greater promise. 

Politics had, since his graduation from college, divided his interest 
with literature. His opportunity for entering upon a political career 
came just at this period. Lord Lansdowne offered him a seat in Par- 
liament for the pocket borough of Calne in February of 1S30. 



xii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY • 

Macaulay entered Parliament at the most dramatic moment of a 
great political crisis in English domestic history. From 1S22 to 1829 
George Canning had steered the Tory ministry into the paths of re- 
form after the long years of repression which had followed the fall of 
Napoleon. He and his colleagues had achieved a merciful revision of 
the criminal code, a wise reduction of certain import duties, a prac- 
tical nullification of the outgrown Navigation Acts, a removal of 
political disabilities . from certain of those sects not holding to the 
tenets of the established church, and a sliding scale of tariff on im- 
ported grain. It was an era of reform, and Canning's name is still 
revered by Englishmen. The greatest reform, however, had not been 
attempted by Canning. During all the years of minor reforms the 
demand for the reform of Parliament had been steadily increasing 
in force and violence. The people were brought to realize that the 
ancient and outworn system of parliamentary representation made 
liberal and popular government a mockery. The appointment of 
more than one half of the members of the House of Commons, the 
popular house of Parliament, was directly under the control of the 
great landholders. Populous cities in the manufacturing area, as 
Leeds and Birmingham, which had grown up since the last important 
change in representation, had no representatives at all, whereas the 
ownership of the green mound of Old Sarum entitled a man to ap- 
point two members in the House. Popular agitation had overwhelm- 
ingly demanded the revision of the representative system, directing its 
attack especially against the " rotten boroughs." The question was the 
chief issue before the House when Macaulay entered political life. 

Macaulay was a Whig and played an important part in the Whig 
campaign in Parliament which passed the Reform Bill. He made his 
maiden speech in the House April 5, 1830, and contributed very 
notably to the success of the Reform Bill by a speech March 2, 183 1. 
From 1831 to 1834 he devoted himself unsparingly to his parliamen- 
tary work, acquiring the reputation of being the most forceful and 
convincing of the Whig speakers. He played a leading part in the 
debates. His contemporaries bear witness to his power and success. 
Jeffrey writes : " It [Macaulay's speech] was prodigiously cheered, 
as it deserved, and, I think, puts him clearly at the head of the great 
speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." Sir James Mackintosh 
said, " Macaulay and Stanley have made two of the finest speeches 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

ever spoken in Parliament." He was called into consultation with 
the party leaders, he had a decided influence upon the progress of 
the liberal policies, he became one of the chief Whigs in the House. 
And he had the chance to share in the Whig triumphs : — " llien again 
the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears," he wrote in a letter 
describing the parliamentary division on the bill ; "I could scarcely 
refrain. And the jaw of Peel fell ; and the face of Twiss was as the 
face of a damned soul ; and Herries looked like Judas taking his 
necktie off for the last operation. We shook hands, and clapped each 
other on the back, and went out laughing, crying, and huzzaing into 
the lobby." 

His parliamentary distinction kept him one of the social lions of 
London. He was dined and praised by all of his own party, but un- 
fortunately this did not help his finances. Although he knew that he 
was laying foundations for the future, the present expenses embar- 
rassed him. His office was swept away in a governmental house- 
cleaning, his fellowship at college expired, and he was actually forced 
at one time, a time too when he was at the height of his political 
fame, to sell the gold medals he had won at the university to get 
money for his immediate needs. His reward for the very important 
part he had taken in the House of Commons in the passage of the 
Reform Bill came to relieve forever his financial worries : he was 
appointed in 1832 one of the commissioners of the Board of Con- 
trol of Indian affairs, and then, in 1833, a member of the Supreme 
Council in India with a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. In 
February, 1834, Macaulay and his beloved sister Hannah sailed for 
Calcutta. 

Macaulay was in India four years. During that time his influence 
upon the conduct of Indian government was important and beneficial. 
By some of his policies he made many enemies among the English 
residents in India, but his reforms stood the test of time and ex- 
perience and enhanced his reputation in his home country. He was 
president of the Committee of Public Instruction and played a prin- 
cipal part in inaugurating a system of national education ; he drew 
up and submitted a draft of a penal code which, years later, formed 
the foundation of the penal code of India ; he upheld the liberty of 
the press, even when its attacks upon him personally were most viru- 
lent ; and he maintained the theory of the equality of Europeans and 



xiv SI':i,l':ci'I()NS I'ROM MACyVlIl^AV 

nalivcs before tlu- l;i\v. When he IclL liuli;i ;uul rclunicd to I'lnglaiul 
in 1H3S, he not only had restored the impaired fortunes of tlie 
Macaulay family hut had immensely raised his own reputation for 
])raetieal slalesnianship and political saj^aeily. 

'I'he years Ihal \vc have treated were the years of Maeaulay's 
political career: in the years that followed 1838 wo sec Macaulay 
definitely turninj; his ambitions from jjolitics to literature. He had 
indeed lirst drawn attention to himself by his writings, and his con- 
tributions to the great lidinbur}:;h Ka<inv had continued through all 
the intervening years. A mere enumeration of the titles and dales of 
the most important of these contributions will indicate his industiy in 
writing: " Machiavelli," March, 1827; " llallam's Constitutional His- 
tory," September, 1828; " Southey's Colloquies," January, 1830; 
"Civil Disabilities of Jews," January, 1831 ; " Byron," June, 1831 ; 
" Croker's Uoswell," Se])tember, 1831; "Pilgrim's I'rogress" and 
"Hampden," December, 1S31 ; " lUirleigh," April, 1832; " War of 
the Succession in Spain," January, 1833; " Walpole," October, 1833; 
"Lord C'hatham," January, 1834; "Mackintosh's History of the 
Revolution in iMigland, 1688," July, 1835; " liaeon," July, 1837; 
" Sir William Temple," October, 1838. His attitude toward his liter- 
ary work, liowever, during these years he cxjjressed in a letter to 
Lord I\,ansdowne in 1833 : " Hitherto, literature has been merely my 
relaxation — the amusement of perhaps a month in the year. I have 
never ct)nsidered it as a means of sujjport. 1 have chosen my own 
topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own terms." His feel- 
ing had changed radically upon his return from Lidia : " I am sick 
of the monotonous succession of parties, and long for quiet and retire- 
ment," he wrote in ]uly. 1838. to Napier, jiublisher of {\\c Ju/in burgh 
A'n'inc. "'lo quit polities for letters is, 1 believe, a wise choice." 
A project was shaping itself in his thought at the time which would, 
he realized, mean long years of study and labor. 

He was unable at once to carry out his desires. After a short con- 
tinental tour, his party demanded his continuance in political life for 
the time being. 'Lhe influence of his reputation was believed to be 
of value in bolstering up the failing Whig fortunes. He stood for a 
seat at Kdinburgh, was elected to the House of Commons in 1839, 
and a few months later accepted the Secretaryship of War with a 
seat in the cabinet. His reappearance in the political arena was not 



IN'I'kODllC'I'lON XV 

due to any di-siics oi' anibilions of liis own, for it (k'layfd what had 
become his ciiicf hope and exposed liiin once again to the bitter 
shafts of j)artisan pens, fortunately for liis liopes, the cabinet fell 
in 1841. and Macaulay was released from his unwelcome honors. 
Although he remained a member of Parliament for tiie rest of his life 
with the exception of five years after a defeat at the polls in 1847, 
he withdrew more and more from parliamentary activities to spend 
his time and strength in his literary work. 

" T have at last begun my historical labors," he wrote to Napier 
N()veml)er 5, i<S4i ; " I can hardly say willi how much interest and 
delight. 1 really do not think that there is in our literature so great 
a void as that which I am trying to supjily. luigiish history, from 
1688 to the r'rench Revolution, is, even to educated peo])le, almost 
a terra i>icoi:;)iita. . . . The materials for an amusing narrative are 
immense. J shall not be satisfied unless I jjroduce something which 
shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables 
of young ladies." In the opening words of the History itself he out- 
lines again the period he intends to cover : " I purpose to write the 
history of luigland from the accession of King James the Second 
down to a time which is within the memory of men still living." 

Although work on his History withdrew him more and more from 
public life, Macaulay enjoyed keenly the society of his intimate 
friends. He was always aminently a social being. In 1839 he had 
been elected a member of The Club, the lineal descendant of The 
C'lub of Johnson and his group, and with the company there assem- 
bled he enjoyed many hai^i^y Ji'Jurs- We have from Lord C'ailisle's 
journal entries showing how often Macaulay dined or breakfasted 
with his friends: "June 27, 1843. — I breakfasted with Hallam, 
John Russell, Macaulay, Everett, Van de Weyer, Mr. Hamilton, 
U.S., and Mahon. Never were such torrents of good talk as burst 
and sputtered over from Macaulay and Hallam." "February 12, 
1849. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. There were Van de Weyer, 
Hallam, Charles Austin, Panizzi, (x)lonel 'J'hure, and Dicky Milnes." 
"May 25th [1849]. — Breakfasted with Rogers. . . . Macaulay was 
very severe on Cranmer." " October i ith [1849]. — [Dinner at Lord 
Carlisle's.] The evening went off very cosily and j)leasant!y, as must 
almost always hai)pen with Macaulay." " March 5th, 1850. — Dined 
at The Club. Dr. Holland in the chair. Lord Lansdowne, Bishop of 



xvi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

London, Lord Mahon, Macaulay, Milman, Van de Weyer, I, David 
Dundas, Lord Harry Vane, Stafford O'Brien. . . . Macaulay's flow 
never ceased once during the four hours, but it is never overbearing." 

Even during the years when he was busy on his History, he found 
time to make important contributions to the Edinburgh Reviezv. His 
essay on Gladstone on Church and State appeared in the number 
for April, 1839 ; on Lord Clive, January, 1840 ; on Ranke's " History 
of the Popes," October, 1840 ; on Comic Dramatists, January, 1841 ; 
on Lord Holland, July, 1841 ; on Warren Hastings, October, 1841 ; 
on Frederick the Great, April, 1842 ; on Madame D'Arblay, January, 
1843 ; on Addison, July, 1843 ; ^^d a second essay on Lord Chatham, 
October, 1844. 

The first volumes of his History appeared in the late autumn of 
1848. Just before their appearance he wrote to his sister: "The 
state of my mind is this : when I compare my book with what I 
imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and ashamed ; but when 
I compare it with some histories which have a high repute, I feel re- 
assured." These volumes won an immediate success. In addition to 
the bulletins from his English publishers, he received flattering reports 
of the popularity of the book in the United States : Harper's wrote 
him in the spring of 1849 announcing the sale of forty thousand' 
copies and predicting that within three months the number would 
reach the enormous total of two hundred thousand. " No work, of 
any kind," this publishing house wrote, " has ever so completely 
taken our whole country by storm." Macaulay comments humor- 
ously in some of his letters to his friend Ellis on his own growing 
fame : "At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through 
Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a 
book-seller's window with the following label: ' Only £2 2s. Hume's 
" History of England," in eight volumes, highly valuable as an intro- 
duction to Macaulay.' " " I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep 
and awake ; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the 
ugliest of the works of God. But you must hear of my triumphs. 
Thackeray swears that he was eye-witness and ear-witness of the 
proudest event of my life. Two damsels were just about to pass thaf 
door-way which we, on Monday, in vain attempted to enter, when I 
was pointed out to them. ' Mr. Macaulay ! ' cried the lovely pair. ' Is 
that Mr. Macaulay ? Never mind the hippopotamus.' And, having 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

paid a shilling to see Behemoth, they left him in the very moment at 
which he was about to display himself to them, in order to see — 
but spare my modesty." 

Honors now were freely offered to him. In November, 1848, 
he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow ; in the 
same year he was made a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1849 ^^ 
was offered the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge ; in 
January, 1852, an attempt was made to gain him back to political 
life by the offer of a seat in the cabinet, but this he refused ; he was 
created a member of the Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin, 
and, in 1853, a member of the Institute of France, and a Knight 
of the Prussian Order of Merit; in June, 1854, he was given the 
degree of Doctor of Civil Letters by Oxford, and was chosen presi- 
dent of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. 

In the meanwhile he had begun his work upon the succeeding 
volumes of his History. The record of day after day in his diary for 
1849 begins with "My task," "Did my t^sk," etc. After 1853 he 
worked almost uninterruptedly upon his book, withdrawing even 
from those social relaxations which had delighted him for so many 
years. November 21, 1855, he entered in his diary the note: "I 
looked over and sent off the last twenty pages. My work is done, 
thank God ! and now for the result. On the whole I think that it 
cannot be very unfavorable." The date of publication was set for 
Monday, December 27th. 

The third and fourth volumes came up to the expectations aroused 
by the first two. The criticisms were uniformly favorable ; the sales 
were enormous. In England alone within a generation upwards of 
one hundred and forty thousand copies were sold ; in the United 
States " no book has ever had such a sale " wrote Everett, " except 
the Bible and one or two school-books of universal use " ; in foreign 
countries the sale was notably great, translations being made into 
German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, 
Hungarian, Russian, Bohemian, and Persian. His financial suc- 
cess was correspondingly noteworthy. He wrote in his journal for 
March 7, 1857: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announce- 
ment. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with 
money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing 
to me — on the usual terms of course — part of what will be due to 



xviii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand 
pounds into William's bank next week. What a sum to be gained by 
one edition of a book ! I may say, gained in one day. But that was 
harvest-day. The work had been near seven years in hand." 

Macaulay's health, which, up to the time he was fifty, had been 
most robust, had given unmistakable signs of weakening before the 
continual strain. As he began the third installment of his History, 
October i, 1856, he was forced to realize that it was improbable he 
would live to complete the design he had announced at the beginning. 
He bent every effort to finish the life of his great hero, William. 

In 1857 he was raised to the peerage. "I went, very low, to 
dinner," he notes in his diary for August 28th, " and had hardly 
begun to eat when a messenger came with a letter from Palmerston. 
An offer of a peerage ; the queen's pleasure already taken. I was 
very much surprised. Perhaps no such offer was ever made without 
the slightest solicitation, direct or indirect, to a man of humble origin 
and moderate fortune, who had long quitted public life. I had no 
hesitation about accepting, with many respectful and grateful expres- 
sions ; but God knows that the poor women at Delhi and Cawnpore 
are more in my thoughts than my coronet. It was necessary for me 
to choose a title off-hand. I determined to be Baron Macaulay of 
Rothley. I was born there ; I have lived much there ; I am named 
from the family which long had the manor ; my uncle was rector 
there." 

Macaulay did not live to finish even that part of the task he had 
set himself after he felt his strength failing. Through the month of 
December, 1859, his weakness became greater daily, resulting in a 
profound melancholy. An entry from his diary will show his condi- 
tion : "December, 19th. Still intense frost. I could hardly use my 
razor for the palpitation of the heart. I feel as if I were twenty 
years older since last Thursday — as if I were dying of old age. I 
am perfectly ready, and shall never be readier. A month more of 
such days as I have been passing of late would make me impatient 
to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory child." He died 
December 28th. 

January 9, i860, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the 
Poets' Corner, near the statue of Addison. The stone bears the 
following inscription : 



INTRODUCTION xix 

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY 

Born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, 

October 25TH, 1800. 

Died at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, 

December 28th, 1859. 

"His body is buried in peace, 
But his name liveth for evermore." 



II 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Entering political life at thirty, during a period when partisan feel- 
ing was exceptionally bitter, Macaulay exposed himself to attacks 
from Tory pens and Tory tongues throughout his whole career. His 
statesmanship was reviled, his speeches scorned, his essays censured, 
his genius belittled. In all the range of criticism, however, no oppo- 
nent ever found a point of attack in Macaulay's character. He lived 
a blameless life in public and in private. Gladstone has well summed 
up his virtues by a categorical denial of faults : " Was he envious .-' 
Never. Was he servile .'' No. Was he insolent ? No. Was he prodi- 
gal ? No, Was he avaricious .-• No. Was he selfish } No. Was he 
idle ? The question is ridiculous. Was he false ? No ; but true as 
steel and transparent as crystal. Was he vain ? We hold that he was 
not. At every point in the ugly list he stands the trial ; and though 
in his history he judges mildly some sins of appetite or passion, there 
is no sign in his life, or in his remembered character, that he was 
compounding for what he was inclined to." 

A bachelor, Macaulay lavished upon his sisters and his sisters' 
children the affection which he might have conceived for a family of 
his own. When the project of a seat in the Indian Council came up, 
requiring residence in India for a term of years, he wrote to his 
sister, outlining the position and its difficulties and begging her to 
accompany him : " Whether the period of my exile shall be one of 
comfort, and, after the first shock, even of happiness, depends on 
you. If, as I expect, this offer shall be made to me, will you go with 
me ? I know what a sacrifice I ask of you. I know how many dear 



XX SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and precious ties you must, for a time, sunder. I know that the 
splendor of the Indian Court, and the gayeties of that brilliant 
society of which you would be one of the leading personages, have 
no temptation for you. I can bribe you only by telling you that, 
if you will go with me, I will love you better than I love you now, 
if I can." His nephew and biographer bears personal witness to 
Macaulay's affection for children. " Uncle Tom " was an avuncular 
deity to a devoted group of nephews and nieces, who, all innocent of 
his fame and of the value of his time, carried him off to the Zoo, to 
the botanical gardens, or to the museums with them. His tales of 
mythical heroes put a new life into the statues or the paintings 
in the museums, and his descriptions of unknown lands lent a new 
interest to the giraffe and the hippopotamus. " He was, beyond all 
comparison, the best of playfellows," writes Trevelyan, " unrivaled 
in the invention of games, and never wearied of repeating them. He 
had an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas for the benefit of his 
nieces, in which he sustained an endless variety of parts with a skill 
that, at any rate, was sufficient for his audience. . . . He was never 
so happy as when he could spend an afternoon in taking his nieces 
and nephews a round of London sights, until, to use his favorite ex- 
pression, they ' could not drag one leg after another.' If he had been 
able to have his own way, the treat would have recurred at least 
twice a week. On these occasions we drove into London in time for 
a sumptuous midday meal, at which everything that we liked best 
was accompanied by oysters, caviare, and olives, some of which deli- 
cacies he invariably provided with the sole object of seeing us reject 
them with contemptuous disgust. Then off we set under his escort, 
in summer to the bears and lions ; in winter to the Panorama of 
Waterloo, to the Colosseum in Regent's Park, or to the enjoyment 
of the delicioys terror inspired by Madame Tussaud's Chamber of 
Horrors. When the more attractive exhibitions had been exhausted 
by too frequent visits, he would enliven with his irrepressible fun the 
dreary propriety of the Polytechnic, or would lead us through the 
lofty corridors of the British Museum, making the statues live and 
the busts speak by the spirit and color of his innumerable anecdotes, 
paraphrased off-hand from the pages of Plutarch and Suetonius." 

The most astonishing characteristics of Macaulay's mind were an 
abnormal memory, a voracious and indiscriminating appetite coupled 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

with a most effective digestion, and an extraordinary capacity for 
work. The words '' appetite " and " digestion " are used advisedly. 
He devoured everything in the line of reading, from philosophy 
and the classics down to. indescribable trash and nonsense ; but 
when he wrote, he sifted the vast amount of material stored in his 
memory until only the needful facts for his subject remained. Re- 
markable tales are told of his memory. Even when a mere child, his 
memory " retained without effort the phraseology of the book which 
he had been last engaged on." He learned Scott's " Lay of the Last 
Minstrel " by heart and the greater part of " Marmion." His own 
childish compositions were, of course, wholly memorized. As a grown 
man, Macaulay was proud of his memory and somewhat impatient 
with men who confessed a poor one. He was always ready to accept 
a test : " ' Can you say your Archbishops of Cantei'bury ? ' ' Any 
fool,' said Macaulay, ' could say his Archbishops of Canterbury back- 
ward ' ; and he went off at a score, drawing breath only once in order 
to remark on the oddity of there having been both an Archbishop 
Bancroft and an Archbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stopped him 
at Cranmer." " His memory is prodigious," writes Charles Sumner, 
" surpassing anything I have ever known, and he pours out its stores 
with an instructive but dinning prodigality. He passes from the 
minutest dates of English history or biography to a discussion of 
the comparative merits of different ancient orators, and gives you 
whole strophes from the dramatists at will." This memory he stored 
with wide reading. The enumeration of his reading for a given period 
will give the best illustration of the fact. To his friend Ellis he writes 
just after his arrival in India : " My power of finding amusement 
without companions was pretty well tried on my voyage. I read in- 
satiably ; the ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey,' Virgil, Horace, Caesar's ' Com- 
mentaries,' Bacon, ' De Augmentis,' Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, 
' Don Quixote,' Gibbon's ' Rome,' Mill's ' India,' all the seventy vol- 
umes of Voltaire, Sismondi's ' History of France,' and the seven 
thick folios of the ' Biographia Britannica.' " Again, to Ellis in 1835, 
he writes : " I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to 
the end of the year 1835. • • • During the last thirteen months I 
have read ^schylus twice ; Sophocles twice ; Euripides once ; Pindar 
twice ; Callimachus ; Apollonius Rhodius ; Quintus Calaber ; Theoc- 
ritus twice ; Herodotus ; Thucydides ; almost all Xenophon's works ; 



xxii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

almost all Plato ; Aristotle's ' Politics,' and a good deal of his ' Orga- 
non,' besides dipping elsewhere in him ; the whole of Plutarch's 
' Lives ' ; about half of Lucian ; two or three books of Athenaeus ; 
Plautus twice ; Terence twice ; Lucretius twice ; Catullus ; Tibullus ; 
Propertius ; Lucan ; Statius ; Silius Italicus ; Livy ; Velleius Pater- 
culus ; Sallust ; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero." 

Macaulay was not fond of society in general, although his position 
at times made heavy demands upon him. He was, however, extremely 
fond of the society of his few intimate friends and seized all oppor- 
tunities of meeting with them. All reports of Ms appearance in 
society, at dinners, etc., emphasize the free flow of his conversation, 
at which the Tories are frankly bored, whereas the Whigs duly marvel. 
For example, Lord Brougham writes : " He is absolutely renowned 
in society as the greatest bore that ever yet appeared. I have seen 
people come in from Holland House, breathless and knocked up, 
and able to say nothing but ' Oh dear, oh mercy.' What 's the 
matter ? being asked. ' Oh, Macaulay.' Then every one said, ' That 
accounts for it — you're lucky to be alive.' " And Wilson's descrip- 
tion of him as "an ugly, cross-made, splay-footed, shapeless little 
dumpling of a fellow " and the statement that " what he says is sub- 
stantially, of course, mere stuff and nonsense " are famous. But both 
these men were Tories and their Tory convictions had no little effect 
upon their opinions of a leading Whig orator. He looked different to 
Whigs. "Went to Bowood to dinner," writes Tom Moore; "Macaulay 
wonderful ; never, perhaps, was there combined so much talent with 
so marvellous a memory. To attempt to record his conversation one 
must be as wonderfully gifted with memory as himself." Hawthorne 
in his " English Note- Books " records the appearance and manner of 
Macaulay in 1856: "He was a man of large presence — a portly 
personage, gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged ; and his face had a 
remarkable intelligence, not vivid, not sparkling, but conjoined with 
great quietude, — and if it gleamed or brightened at one time more 
than another, it was like the sheen over a broad surface of the sea. 
There was a somewhat careless self-possession, large and broad 
enough to be called dignity. ... I began to listen to his conversa- 
tion, but he did not talk a great deal, — contrary to his usual custom; 
for I am told he is apt to engross all the talk to himself." 

Trevelyan remarks that Macaulay dressed badly but not poorly, and 
recalls the great number of articles of apparel his uncle possessed. 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

Grenville Murray in his " Personal Reminiscences " tells of one occa- 
sion when Macaulay, an undergraduate in Cambridge, received from 
one of the dons an invitation to dinner. Macaulay was about to dis- 
patch his letter of regrets when " some comrades burst into his room, 
and being informed of the correspondence pending, told Macaulay 
that ' he must accept.' As the invitation was for that very day, they 
further decided that Macaulay must be washed, scrubbed for the occa- 
sion, for in those days he was excessively negligent of his personal 
appearance. And the thing was done vi et armisy This carelessness 
in dress characterized Macaulay all his life. 

Macaulay was notably charitable in nature. It is recorded that one 
of the last acts of his life was to dictate a letter to a poor curate and 
inclose twenty-five pounds. When his works had made him famous, 
appeals for help reached him from all sources. His diary records his 

generosity : " H called. I gave him three guineas for his library 

subscription. I lay out very little money with so much satisfaction. 
For three guineas a year, I keep a very good, intelligent young fellow 
out of a great deal of harm and do him a great deal of good." " I 

have sent her [Mrs. Z ] twenty pounds ; making up what she 

has had from me within a few months to a hundred and thirty 

pounds." " I sent some money to Miss , a middling writer, 

whom I relieved some time ago. I have been giving too fast of late 
— forty pounds in four or five days. I must pull in a little." 

We can best sum up the personal side of Macaulay in the words 
of Frederic Harrison : " In one thing all agree — critics, public, 
friends, and opponents. Macaulay's was a life of purity, honor, 
courage, generosity, affection, was manly perseverance, almost with- 
out a stain or defect. . . . We know his nature and his career as well 
as we know any man's ; and we find it on every side wholesome, 
just, and right." 

Ill 

MACAULAY'S PROSE WORKS 

It would be an interesting and perhaps not wholly uninstructive 
task to collect in parallel columns a series of judgments of Macaulay's 
work, placing to the one side the eulogies, and to the other the cen- 
sures. Rarely have the critics who pretend to utter the dictates of 
taste been so confounded by their own diversity. On the one hand 



xxiv SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Augustine Birrell says : " Macaulay's style — his much-praised style 
— is ineffectual for the purpose of telling the truth about anything. 
It is splendid, but splendide metidox, and in Macaulay's case the style 
was the man." Morison declares : " The chief complaint — and it is 
sufficiently grave — is of a constant and pervading want of depth, 
either of thought or sentiment. ... He never has anything to say 
on the deeper aspects and relations of life." William Watson writes, 
" The vice of Macaulay's style is its unrelieved facility, its uniform 
velocity " ; and Frederic Harrison adds, " Macaulay is brilliant and 
emphatic, but we weary at last of his everlasting staccato on the 
trumpet." On the other hand we may set over against these opinions 
the words of Freeman: " First of all, Macaulay is a model of style — 
of style not merely as a kind of literary luxury, but of style in its 
practical aspect. . . . Every one who wishes to write clear and pure 
English will do well to become, not Macaulay's ape, but Macaulay's 
disciple. Every writer of English will do well, not only to study 
Macaulay's writings, but to bear them in his mind, and very often to 
ask himself, not whether his writing is like Macaulay's writing, but 
whether his writing is such as Macaulay would have approved." 
Hunt adds : ^' The one who denies his claim to be ranked among the 
first examples of English style, must see to it that he be prepared to 
maintain his difficult position. . . . There are but few representative 
writers of English whose style so happily avoids the extreme of 
pedantry on the one hand, and that of purism on the other." And 
in an excellent summary Miss Vida D. Scudder states : " He had a 
wonderful memory, unfailing industry, a vivid conception of the past 
and a unique style ; and he was thoroughly interested in his subject. 
He said the things that the most intelligent people thought, so elo- 
quently and incisively that they began at once to pride themselves on 
their own cleverness." Thus both in point of matter and of style do 
the critics differ. 

However certain critics may carp at Macaulay's work, it is certain 
that it has stood that one test which is the final test of worth, namely, 
the test of time. Macaulay has been dead now for more than half a 
century, but his essays and his History are still widely read and his 
prose has a notable place of honor in the realm of English letters. 
Any historian of English literature of the first half of the eighteenth 
century who did not give a prominent place to Macaulay would lay 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

himself open to the most severe criticism. He has won his way to a 
firm place in the hearts of readers of English the world over. " A 
recent traveler in Avistralia informs us," says John Morley, " that the 
three books which he found on every squatter's shelf, and which at 
last he knew before he crossed the threshold that he should be sure 
to find, were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays." 

The severest critics of Macaulay censure him most often for the 
lack of virtues which he never himself pretended to possess. Macaulay 
did not aim to be a subtle analyst, bringing out with delicate artistry 
the shadowy nuances of words. He was rather a typical plain blunt 
Englishman writing for people of his own type. He never tried to 
convey to his readers an appreciation of the inexplicable mysteries 
of life, of the depths of passion or the heights of self-sacrifice ; spec- 
ulative philosophy held no attractions for him. As Emerson has 
expressed it : " The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of 
the English governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that good 
means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity ; that the glory 
of modern philosophy is its direction on ' fruit ' ; to yield economical 
inventions ; and that its merit is to avoid ideas and avoid morals." 
It is undoubtedly true that Macaulay acted and wrote as though life 
was to him an open book easily read and understood. Here again, 
Macaulay was the typical Englishman writing for the people of his 
own class. Half jestingly, he gave his ideal in writing his History as 
the creation of an account which should replace upon young ladies' 
tables the latest fashionable novel. His degree of success in reaching 
this ideal is nearly the measure of his degree of success in accom- 
plishing what he purposed to do in all his writing. The faults which 
the critics point out in his work are faults inherent in the nature of 
the man, are failures to do something which he never tried to do. 

As a typical Englishman writing for others of his class, Macaulay 
excels by the bluntness, directness, simplicity, and interest of his nar- 
rative. His work is instinct with manliness, with those virtues which 
we associate with the English character. The judgments are always 
moral judgments ; courage and patriotism breathe from every page ; 
deeds of excitement and daring appeal to him as to a boy and are 
recounted with all the enthusiasm of youth. With bold partisanship he 
tends to exaggerate the faults of his villains and the virtues of his 
heroes, and carries his narrative on with a never ceasing rush and a 



xxvi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

never failing interest. History had never been written that way before. 
It is a curious and noteworthy fact that a group of workingmen moved 
a vote of thanks to Mr. Macaulay for' having written a history that 
they could understand and appreciate. 

The supreme merit of Macaulay's style is its clearness. As Carlyle 
may be called the Browning of prose, Macaulay is its Tennyson. 
The reader may go over a sentence or a paragraph to admire its 
structure, but he need never do so to learn its meaning. Macaulay 
himself was especially proud of this characteristic of his writing. 
His nephew relates his pleasure at hearing of a man who commented 
upon the fact that he had read the entire published volumes of the 
History and had been forced to reread only one sentence for its 
meaning. 

This clearness is obtained by the repeated use of the simplest type 
of paragraph development. Macaulay's normal paragraph begins 
with a sentence which, like a good signboard, points the way directly 
to all that follows in that paragraph. The first sentence is truly the 
topic sentence ; the following sentences in the paragraph are devel- 
opment, illustration, or proof of the statement given in the first. 

Macaulay was not only clear, but uniformly interesting. He was, 
in the first place, a natural-born story-teller, gifted with marvelous 
facility in the selection of the strikingly important facts in his narra- 
tive, and with the touch of genius in the selection of the phrases in 
which he presented these facts. And in the second place, he was a 
most careful artist in his writing, using all the devices of antithesis, 
balanced sentences, abrupt transitions, and climax to relieve the pos- 
sible monotony of his prose. In a study of the English paragraph, 
Edwin H. Lewis writes : " The popular impression that Macaulay is 
the best of paragraphers is probably not far from the truth. The 
great rhetorician bestowed unlimited pains upon his paragraphs, and 
no preceding writer began to equal him in conscious appreciation of 
the importance of that structure. His unity is rhetorical, rather than 
logical ; but as such it is nearly always unimpeachable. ... In the 
matter of proportion by bulk he is nearly always admirable. He 
knows his principal point, and it is on this that he enlarges. His 
emphasis-proportion is consciously paragraphic. He reveals very 
great variability in sentence-length, and drives home his main topic 
and his main conclusion in simple sentences. When he masses clauses 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

it is to relieve each of emphasis and show the unity of the group as 
amplifying some previous terse generalization." 

Furthermore, he was a past master of the art of illustrative com- 
parison for the adornment of his theme. A thorough master of the 
literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and of the modern litera- 
ture of France, Italy, and England, and possessed of a miraculous 
memory, Macaulay drew upon his vast storehouse to enliven his nar- 
rative. One critic (Payn) accuses Macaulay of being " the writer who 
has done most, without I suppose intending it, to promote hypocrisy 
in literature. . . . His ' every schoolboy knows ' has frightened thou- 
sands into pretending to know authors with whom they have not 
even a bowing acquaintance." The presumption of intention in pro- 
moting hypocrisy is, of course, absurd ; Macaulay never throughout 
his whole life realized how much more familiar he was with the liter- 
atures of ancient and modem times than were his contemporaries. 
No writer has drawn with greater facility or better judgment upon 
these literatures for the illustration of his own themes. 

Another means by which he maintained continued interest in his 
narrative was by the use of anecdotes in the identification of each 
place, incident, or personage in his account. Says Morison : " He 
hardly ever mentions a site, a town, a castle, a manor-house, he 
rarely introduces even a subordinate character, without bringing in a 
picturesque anecdote, an association, a reminiscence out of his bound- 
less stores of knowledge, which sparkles like a gem on the texture of 
his narrative. Nothing can exceed the skill with which these little 
vignettes are thrown in, and they are incessant ; yet they never 
seem to be in the way, or to hinder the main effect." These little 
" vignettes " serve to attach to the place or the personage a unique 
and individual interest. The reader feels the warmth of an intimate 
acquaintance at once. 

Macaulay writes always as a special pleader, an attitude derived per- 
haps from his law training and his services in Parliament. He is argu- 
ing a case before the jury of his countrymen ; he frames his argument 
for their ears ; he adjusts his style to their order. He lays himself 
open to the charges of partisanship — " historiographer in chief to 
the Whigs, and the great prophet of Whiggery," James Thomson 
called him — and to the unpardonable sin (in the eyes of literary 
critics) of commonplaceness. He gained and has retained, however, 



xxviii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the attention of a greater audience than any other English historian. 
He made the seventeen years of which he wrote the best-known 
period of English history. He created the historical essay, a new 
type in literature. If he was partisan, his partisanship lent eloquence 
and fervor to his language ; it did not materially affect the truth of 
his account. He wrote a new kind of history, a kind which has been 
brilliantly and, perhaps, more scientifically developed since his own 
day but which, in its essential characteristics, has not been bettered. 
He had the historian's gift of perspective, of seeing and presenting 
historical incidents in their proper mutual relation. He painted on a 
huge canvas and kept all parts of his picture in view at once. 

Above all, Macaulay was always supremely patriotic. He was an 
Englishman, conscious and proud of the greatness of his race and its 
traditions of political liberty. His essays and his History are both in- 
herently a testimony to the true fame ot England and of English 
political institutions. " He had," writes Herbert Paul, " an almost 
passionate belief in the progress of society and in the greatness of 
England." And another critic in somewhat similar strain declares 
that " with Macaulay the love of country was a passion. How he 
kindles at each stirring or plaintive memory in the annals he was so 
glad to record." 

So Macaulay is wholesome reading. He is not endowed with a 
sense of the mystery of things which tempts speculative philosophy ; 
he was blunt, direct, and plain rather than delicate and complex ; he 
used the eloquence of a partisan. With all these failings, however, he 
made a definite selected bit of the past alive for us to-day as no other 
English historian had done before him. In his short essay on History 
he set forth his ideals of how history should be written ; in his " History 
of England" — and, indeed, in his historical essays — he attempted 
to reach his own ideal. With infinite patience and labor he collated 
his materials and framed his narrative. His success was deserved. 
" Macaulay is absolutely unrivalled in the art of arranging and com- 
bining his facts, and of presenting in a clear and vigorous narrative 
the spirit of the epoch he treats," says McMaster, and with this 
judgment we can all agree. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE PROSE 
OF MACAULAY 

MILTON 

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy 
keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches 
among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manu- 
script. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign 
despatches written by Milton while he filled the ofhce of Sec- 
retary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and 
the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an enve- 
lope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On examina- 
tion, the large manuscript proved to be the long-lost Essay on 
the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and 
Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited 
with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same 
political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore 
probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen 
under the suspicions of the Government during that persecu- 
tion of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford 
parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of 
his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in 
which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a 
genuine relic of the great poet, 

Mr. Sumner who was commanded by his Majesty to edit 
and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in 
a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His 
version is not indeed very easy or elegant ; but it is entitled 
to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with 



2 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really eluci- 
dating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensi- 
ble and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and 
tolerant towards those of others. 

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. 
It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly 
in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. 
There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupu- 
lous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which character- 
ises the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does 
not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the 
Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice 
sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his 
subject compelled him to use many words 

That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were 
his mother tongue ; and, where he is least happy, his failure 
seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the 
ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham 
with great felicity says of Cowley : "He wears the garb, but 
not the clothes of the ancients." 

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a power- 
ful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of 
authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes 
to form his system from the Bible alone ; and his digest of 
scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. 
But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his 
citations. 

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to 
have excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arian- 
ism, and his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can 
scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Pa?'adise 
Lost without suspecting him of the former ; nor do we think 
that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought 
to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has 



MILTON 3 

expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of 
matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, 
have caused more just surprise. 

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The 
book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, 
would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The 
men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos, 
A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Poptili 
to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its 
author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publica- 
tion, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month 
or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- 
room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and it will then, 
to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn 
to make room for the forthcoming novelties. 

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient 
as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous 
Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a 
saint, until they have awakened the devotional feelings of their 
auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his 
garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the 
same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late inter- 
esting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good 
man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral 
and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the 
severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the 
present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the day, 
to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and 
virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, 
the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of 
English liberty. 

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it is of 
his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage 
of the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the 
greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though 
outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, 



4 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to 
extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they 
acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among 
the noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not 
allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in 
the infancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the 
want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, 
bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, 
it is said, inherited what his predecessors created ; he lived in 
an enlightened age ; he received a finished education, and we 
must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, 
make large deductions in consideration of these advantages. 

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the 
remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with 
more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, 
as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an 
age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make 
him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, 
understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew 
that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisa- 
tion which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had 
acquired ; and he looked back with something like regret to the 
ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. 

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost neces- 
sarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those 
great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, 
we do not admire them the more because they have appeared 
in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonder- 
ful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a 
civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in 
that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets 
are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were 
the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phaenomenon 
indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 

The fact is, that common observers reason from the prog- 
ress of the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The 



MILTON 5 

improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent 
in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining 
them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still 
something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation 
enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, 
and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to 
future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators 
lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are 
entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual 
powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every 
girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political 
Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in 
finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely apply- 
ing himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than 
the great Newton knew after half a century of study and 
meditation. 

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculp- 
ture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refine- 
ment rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. 
It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to 
the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and 
the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best 
fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like indi- 
viduals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from 
particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of 
an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised 
people is poetical. 

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and 
partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of 
their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains 
and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advance- 
ment of knowledge ; but particularity is indispensable to the 
creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know 
more and think more, they look less at individuals and more 
at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse 
poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and 



6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able 
to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis 
is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to 
dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury ; 
he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius ; 
or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on 
such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so 
called, than the- notions which a painter may have conceived 
respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood 
will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. 
If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human 
actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a 
good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have con- 
tained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be 
found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have 
created an lago } Well as he knew how to resolve characters 
into their elements, would he have been able to combine those 
elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, 
individual man .? 

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, 
without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives 
so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry 
we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in 
verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions 
which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry 
we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to. 
produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by 
means of words what the painter does by means of colours. 
Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally 
admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still 
more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey 
of the art in which he excelled : 

As the imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 



MILTON 7 

These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he ascribes 
to the poet — a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, 
indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the truth of madness. 
The reasonings are just ; but the premises are false. After the 
first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be con- 
sistent ; but those first suppositions require a degree of credu- 
lity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derange- 
ment of the intellect. Hence of all people children are the 
most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve 
to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to 
their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No 
man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Ham- 
let or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red 
Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves can- 
not speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite 
of her knowledge she believes ; she weeps ; she trembles ; she 
dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth 
of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the 
imagination over uncultivated minds. 

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater 
variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that 
we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest 
perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelli- 
gence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just clas- 
sification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, 
abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. 
Men will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They 
will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a 
certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to 
conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder an- 
cestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The 
Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite 
Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly 
feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The 
power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exer- 
cised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost 



8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized com- 
munity, and most rare among those who participate most in 
its improvements. They linger longest amongst the peasantry. 

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a 
magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. 
And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry 
effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light 
of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of 
certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of 
probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments 
of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and 
fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality 
and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite 
enjoyment of fiction. 

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to 
be a great poet must first become a little child, he must take 
to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much 
of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his 
chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance 
to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency 
in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contempo- 
raries ; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to 
the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all 
his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisp- 
ing man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time 
great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in 
this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we 
will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and 
feeble applause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over 
greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned educa- 
tion : he was a profound and elegant classical scholar : he had 
studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature : he was inti- 
mately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from 
which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. 
He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been 



MILTON 9 

distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius 
of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in 
the ancient language, though much praised by those who have 
never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all 
his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination : nor 
indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of 
Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. 
But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages 
till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, 
and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as 
a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. 

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, 
costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be found 
in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which 
this rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited to the produc- 
tion of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house 
to the growth of oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lost 
should have written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. 
Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite 
mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of 
Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is 
admirably preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives 
to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, 
which distinguishes them from all other writings of the same 
class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic 
warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 

About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears 
Hung high, with diamond flaming, and with gold. 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the 
genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of 
the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to 
wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every 
obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that 
it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but 



lO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat 
and radiance. 

It is not our intention to attempt anything Hke a complete 
examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been 
agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the 
incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of 
that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no paro- 
dist to degrade, "which displays in their highest perfection the 
idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every 
ancient and every modern language has contributed something 
of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism 
on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already 
put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the 
negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with 
a sheaf. 

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is 
the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which 
it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by 
what it expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so much by the 
ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are 
connected with them. He electrifies the mind through con- 
ductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the 
Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no 
exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images 
in so clear a light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. 
The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, un- 
less the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the writer. 
He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere pas- 
sive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the 
outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects his hearer to 
make out the melody. 

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The 
expression in general means nothing : but, applied to the writ- 
ings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an 
incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in 
its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no 



MILTON I I 

more in his words than in other words. But they are words 
of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the 
past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty 
start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the 
memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sen- 
tence ; substitute one synonym for another, and the whole 
effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power : and he who 
should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as 
much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood 
crying, " Open Wheat," " Open Barley," to the door which 
obeyed no sound but " Open Sesame." The miserable failure 
of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some 
parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. 

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely 
any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known 
or more frequently repeated than those which are little more 
than muster-rolls of names. They are not always more appro- 
priate or more melodious than other names. Every one of them 
is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the 
dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the 
song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce 
upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. 
One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another 
places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant 
region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of 
childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, 
and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phan- 
toms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered 
housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted 
gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles 
of rescued princesses. 

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more 
happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is 
impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be 
brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems 
differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose 



12 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. 
They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, 
from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for him- 
self. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. 

The Coinus and the Samson Agoiiistes are works which, 
though of very different merit, offer some marked points of 
resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. 
There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially 
dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the 
dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing 
appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his 
personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as un- 
pleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of 
a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, 
that the tragedies of Byron were his least successful perform- 
ances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the 
friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single moveable 
head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the same face 
looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, 
the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the 
characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown 
and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this 
species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration 
of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, 
without reserve, to his own emotions. 

Between these hostile elements many great men have en- 
deavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete 
success. The Greek Drama, on the model of which the Samson 
was written, sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted, 
on the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The 
genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists co-operated 
with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first ap- 
pearance, ^schylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his 
time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than 
in the days of Homer ; and they had not yet acquired that 
immense superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, 



MILTON 1 3 

in the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with 
contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem 
that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to 
Eg}'pt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural 
that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Orien- 
tal style. And that style, we think, is discernible in the works 
of Pindar and yEschylus. The latter often reminds us of the 
Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and dic- 
tion, bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. 
Considered as plays, his works are absurd ; considered as 
choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we exam- 
ine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, 
or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles 
of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as mon- 
strous. But if we forget the characters, and think only of the 
poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in 
energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek Drama 
as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His por- 
traits of men have a sort of similarity ; but it is the similarity not 
of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance ; 
but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to 
carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his 
powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting 
what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted 
crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much 
more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed 
the caresses which this partiality leads our countryman to 
bestow on "sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the 
beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. 
At all events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for 
the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson 
Agonistcs. Had Milton taken yEschylus for his model, he 
would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and 
poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without 
bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the 



14 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

nature of the work rendered it impossible to preserve. In the 
attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent he 
has failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot 
identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We 
cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. 
The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, 
neutralise each other. We are by no means insensible to the 
merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the 
style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening 
speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking 
an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, 
the least successful effort of the genius of Milton. 

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, 
as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. 
It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists 
in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shep- 
herdess as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aininta, or the 
Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had 
here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the 
literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same 
veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian 
and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing 
recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors 
were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He 
could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style ; 
but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no 
objection to a russet attire ; but she turned with disgust from 
the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a 
chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears 
are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable 
of standing the severest test of the crucible. 

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he 
afterwards neglected in the Samsoji. He made his Masque 
what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in 
semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against 
a defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition ; 



MILTON 15 

and he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not im- 
possible. The speeches must be read as majestic sohloquies ; 
and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their elo- 
quence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions 
of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, 
and break the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are 
those which are lyric in form as well as in spirit. " I should 
much commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a 
letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish 
me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, 
whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet noth- 
ing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is 
when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when 
he is discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous 
styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures 
without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like 
his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form and weeds 
of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he 
seems to cry exultingly, 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly or I can run," 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the 
Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of 
nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter 
through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. 

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which 
we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly 
would we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable 
poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely enough, is 
scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of the blindness 
of the parental affection which men of letters bear towards the 
offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in pre- 
ferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we 
readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the 
Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more decided, 



i6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem 
which has since made its appearance. Our hmits, however, 
prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on 
to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of 
critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times which can be compared 
with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of 
Milton, in some ^points, resembled that of Dante ; but he has 
treated it in a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, 
better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet, than 
by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. 

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hier- 
oglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. 
The images which Dante employs speak for themselves ; they 
stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signifi- 
cation which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their 
value depends less on what they directly represent than on what 
they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, 
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he 
never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the 
colour, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the numbers ; 
he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a 
traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, 
they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner ; not 
for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are 
drawn ; not for the sake of any ornament which they may 
impart to the poem ; but simply in order to make the meaning 
of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The 
ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh 
circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the 
Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was 
like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. 
The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs 
resembled the vast cemetery of Aries. 

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the 
dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The 



MILTON 17 

English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. 
He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage 
the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a 
rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to 
the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. 
When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian 
angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his stature reaches 
the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which 
Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. " His 
face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. 
Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs were in proportion ; so 
that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, 
nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans 
would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are 
sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the 
Florentine poet. But Mr. Gary's translation is not at hand ; and 
our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of 
the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. 
Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in in- 
distinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying 
from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, 
Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, 
delaying to strike. What says Dante.? "There was such a 
moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between 
July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and 
of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit to- 
gether ; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue 
from decayed limbs." 

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of set- 
tling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own 
department is incomparable ; and each, we may remark, has 
wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his 
peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy 
is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness 
of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard 



1 8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has 
read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is 
no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the 
Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch 
of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped 
the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have chmbed the 
mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by 
the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale 
in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest 
air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the 
greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative 
of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the 
adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The 
author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he 
had introduced those minute particulars which give such a 
charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the 
affected delicacy about names, the offlcial documents tran- 
scribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and 
scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending 
to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man 
who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, 
and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the 
romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at 
Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, 
and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial 
touches could produce for a single moment a deception on 
the imagination. 

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the 
agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. 
Here Dante decidedly yields to him : and as this is a point 
on which many rash and ill-considered judgments have been 
pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The 
most fatal error which a poet can possibly commit in the man- 
agement of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise 
too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits 
many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these 



MILTON 19 

objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we 
venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. 

What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the portion of 
spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We observe certain 
phaenomena. We cannot explain them into material causes. 
We therefore infer that there exists something which is not 
material. But of this something we have no idea. We can 
define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by 
symbols. We use the word ; but we have no image of the 
thing ; and the business of poetry is with images, and not with 
words. The poet uses words indeed ; but they are merely the 
instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the materials 
which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a picture 
to the mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are 
no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas and 
a box of colours to be called a painting. 

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass 
of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multi- 
tude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no 
other principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason 
to believe, worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity 
of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few 
centuries, the innumerable crowd of Gods and Goddesses. In 
like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit 
the Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred 
to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered 
due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is 
the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, sup- 
ported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fasci- 
nating desire of having some visible and tangible object of 
adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon 
has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread 
over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, 
operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncre- 
ated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worship- 
pers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception ; but 



20 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented 
no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a 
human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, 
leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering 
in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of 
the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride 
of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of 
thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after Christi- 
anity had achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted 
it began to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron 
saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took 
the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss 
of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cecilia suc- 
ceeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and 
loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dignity ; and the 
homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion. Re- 
formers have often made a stand against these feelings ; but 
never with more than apparent and partial success. The men 
who demolished the images in cathedrals have not always been 
able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds. It 
would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds 
good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied 
before they can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude is 
more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the 
most insignificant name, than for the most important principle. 
From these considerations, we infer that no poet, who should 
affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton 
has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, how- 
ever, there was another extreme which, though far less danger- 
ous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in 
a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most 
exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when 
it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to 
be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philoso- 
phers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him 
to abstain from giving such a shock to their understanding as 



MILTON 21 

might break the charm which it was his object to throw over 
their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indis- 
tinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been 
reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely 
necessary that the spirit should be clothed with material forms. 
" But," says he, " the poet should have secured the consistency 
of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing 
the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said ; 
but what if Milton could not seduce his readers to drop im- 
materiality from their thoughts ? What if the contrary opinion 
had taken so full a possession of the minds of men as to leave- 
no room even for the half belief which poetry requires .'' Such 
we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the 
poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. 
He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground. He left 
the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, laid 
himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though 
philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he 
was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other 
writer would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The 
peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning 
circuitously through a long succession of associated ideas, and 
of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise 
those incongruities which he could not avoid. 

Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to 
be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. 
That of Dante is picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was 
written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil 
or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all 
mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a fault inseparable 
from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as we have already 
observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. 
Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest ; 
but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. 
We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and daemons, without 
any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask 



22 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's 
angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful ugly 
executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange 
situations. The scene which passes between the poet and 
Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the burning 
tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an atito da 
f(f. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of 
Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman 
chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover 'for whose 
affection she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates ? The 
feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the streets 
of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other 
writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. 
They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked 
men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no 
tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They 
have just enough in common with human nature to be intelli- 
gible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, 
marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exag- 
gerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 

Perhaps the gods and daemons of .^schylus may best bear a 
comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style 
of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the 
Oriental character ; and the same peculiarity may be traced in 
his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance 
which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is 
rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of ^Fschylus 
seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful 
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God 
of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and 
grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined 
her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindustan still bows down to 
her seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the 
elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with 
whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the 



MILTON 23 

gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among 
his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half iiend, half 
redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy 
of Heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable re- 
semblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same 
impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same uncon- 
querable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though 
in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. 
Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks 
too much of his chains and his uneasy posture : he is rather 
too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to de- 
pend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the 
fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his 
release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over 
the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be con- 
ceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even 
exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder 
of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning 
with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of uninter- 
mitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its 
own innate energies, requiring no support from anything 
external, nor even from hope itself. 

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been 
attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add 
that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree 
taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not 
egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their 
readers. They have nothing in common with those modern 
beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion 
of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of 
their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers 
whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, 
coloured by their personal feelings. 

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by 
loftiness of spirit : that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In 



24 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which 
is produced by pride strugghng with misery. There is perhaps 
no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The 
melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as 
far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of 
external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor 
glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven 
could dispel it. "It turned every consolation and every pleasure 
into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil 
of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible 
even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of 
the Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and 
where the light was as darkness." The gloom of his character 
discolours all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, 
and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and 
the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are 
singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, 
noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the 
haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and con- 
temptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to a 
man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. 

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover ; and, like 
Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He 
had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, 
and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom 
he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had 
been taken away from the evil to come ; some had carried into 
foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; 
some were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth 
their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with 
just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the 
style of a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the 
Sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, which 
could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of 
Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping 
with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene 



MILTON 25 

dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the 
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be 
chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rout 
of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could 
be excused in any man, they might have been excused in 
Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. 
Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic 
afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor pro- 
scription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and 
majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, 
but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, 
perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings could 
render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of 
great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of 
health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and 
glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, 
after having experienced every calamity which is incident to 
our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his 
hovel to die. 

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a 
time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in gen- 
eral beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they 
have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he 
adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the 
physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus nor 
Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasant- 
ness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst 
sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of 
summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His con- 
ception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental 
harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with 
all the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. His 
poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks 
and dells, beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most 
rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom 
unchilled on the vergfe of the avalanche. 



26 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be 
found in all his works ; but it is most strongly displayed in the 
Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by 
critics who have not understood their nature. They have no epi- 
grammatic point. There is none o5 the ingenuity of Filicaja in 
the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch 
in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feel- 
ings of the poet- as little tricked out for the public eye as his 
diary would have been. A victory, an unexpected attack upon 
the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest 
thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short 
time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave 
had closed for ever, led him to musings, which without effort 
shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and 
severity of style which characterise these little pieces remind us 
of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects 
of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of 
Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. 

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the 
occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. 
But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety 
and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look 
for a parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any 
decided inferences as to the character of a writer from passages 
directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed 
to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts 
of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguish- 
able in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and 
poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. 

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a 
man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He 
lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of man- 
kind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes 
and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. 
That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no 
single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on 



MILTON 27 

the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then 
were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since 
worked their way into the depths of the American forests, 
which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation 
of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to 
the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of 
the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an 
unwonted fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, 
Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. 
We need not say how much we admire his public conduct. 
But we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of 
his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, in- 
deed, has been more discussed, and is less understood, than 
any event in English history. The friends of liberty laboured 
under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable com- 
plained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their 
enemies were the painters. As a body, the Roundheads had 
done their utmost to decry and ruin literature ; and literature 
was even with them, as, in the long-run, it always is with its 
enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the 
charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the 
Parliamejit is good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting 
crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish 
and violent ; and most of the later writers who have espoused the 
same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, 
have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than 
either by candour or by skill. On the other side are the most 
authoritative and the most popular historical works in our lan- 
guage, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume, The former is 
not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has 
also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prej- 
udices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, 
from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading 
public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion 
so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with 



28 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity 
of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge. 

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or con- 
demned according as the resistance of the people to Charles 
the First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall 
therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the 
discussion of that interesting and most important question. We 
shall not argue -it on general grounds. We shall not recur to 
those primary principles from which the claim of any govern- 
ment to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We 
are entitled to that vantage ground ; but we will relinquish it. 
We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are 
not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those 
ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield 
against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the advan- 
tage of sun and wind. We will take the naked constitutional 
question. We confidently affirm, that every reason which can 
be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged 
with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great 
Rebellion. 

In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of 
Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. 
He was not, in name and profession, a Papist ; we say in name 
and profession, because both Charles himself and his creature 
Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, re- 
tained all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to 
authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish 
passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly 
character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This, however, 
we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good Protestant ; 
but we say that his Protestantism does not make the slightest 
distinction between his case and that of James. 

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly 
misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the 
present year. There is a certain class of men, who, while they 
profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions 



MILTON 29 

of former times, never look at them for any other purpose 
than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses. 
In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, 
and take only what is accidental : they keep out of sight what 
is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defec- 
tive. If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing 
unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, 
and dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end 
has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their 
prototype, that 

Their labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil. 

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revo- 
lution these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a 
tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, se- 
curity, toleration, all go for nothing with them. One sect there 
was, which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought 
necessary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire 
there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its 
misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our 
freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which the 
politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which 
seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to 
palliate, the good which it has produced. Talk to them of 
Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They stand forth 
zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right which has now come 
back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias 
of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then 
William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great 
men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same 
persons, who, in this country never omit an opportunity of 
reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs 
of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's Channel, 
than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and im- 
mortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at 



30 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

men, but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not 
who does it ; the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, 
Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On such 
occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their can- 
did construction. The bold assertions of these people have of 
late impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that 
James the Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic, 
and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution. 

But this certainly was not the case ; nor can any person 
who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times 
than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, 
if James had held his own religious opinions without wish- 
ing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, 
he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional 
influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever 
have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew 
their own meaning ; and, if we may believe them, their hos- 
tility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did 
not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catholic ; but they 
excluded Catholics from the crown, because they thought 
them likely to be tyrants. The ground on which they, in 
their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, 
" that James had broken the fundamental laws of the king- 
dom." Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution 
of 1688 must hold that the breach of fundamental laws on 
the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question, 
then, is this : Had Charles the First broken the fundamental 
laws of England } 

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses 
credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles 
by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royal- 
ists, and to the confessions of the King himself. If there be 
any truth in any historian of any party, who has related the 
events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his acces- 
sion to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a con- 
tinued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who 



MILTON 31 

applaud the Revolution and condemn the Rebellion, mention 
one act of James the Second to which a parallel is not to be 
found in the history of his father. Let them lay their fingers 
on a single article in the Declaration of Right, presented by 
the two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not 
acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the tes- 
timony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legis- 
lature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and 
quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexa- 
tious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed 
without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate ; 
the right of petition was grossly violated ; arbitrary judgments, 
exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were griev- 
ances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify re- 
sistance, the Revolution was treason ; if they do, the Great 
Rebellion was laudable. 

But it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? Why, after 
the King had consented to so many reforms, and renounced 
so many oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue 
to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war ? 
The ship-money had been given up. The Star-Chamber had 
been abolished. Provision had been made for the frequent 
convocation and secure deliberation of parliaments. Why not 
pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular 
means } We recur again to the analogy of the Revolution, 
Why was James driven from the throne ? Why was he not 
retained upon conditions } He too had offered to call a free 
parliament and to submit to its decision all the matters in 
dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, 
who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of 
strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing 
arrru/, and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a 
tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the 
same principle, and is entitled to the s'ame praise. They could 
not trust the King. He had no doubt passed salutary laws ; 
but what assurance was there that he would not break them ? 



32 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He had renounced oppressive prerogatives ; but where was the 
security that he would not resume them ? The nation had to 
deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and 
broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had 
been a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed. 

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger 
ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James 
can be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the 
Petition of Right. The Lords and Commons present him with 
a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked 
out. He hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to give his 
assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent ; 
the subsidies are voted ; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved, 
than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he 
had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of 
the very Act which he had been paid to pass. 

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights 
which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inherit- 
ance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king 
who had recognised them. At length circumstances compelled 
Charles to summon another parliament : another chance was 
given to our fathers : were they to throw it away as they had 
thrown away the former .? Were they again to be cozened by 
le Roi le vent? Were they again to advance their money on 
pledges which had been forfeited over and over again .? Were 
they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the 
throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another 
unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, 
after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince 
should again require a supply, and again repay it with a per- 
jury 1 They were compelled to choose whether they would 
trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose 
wisely and nobly. 

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other male- 
factors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, 
generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content 



MILTON 33 

themselves with calhng testimony to character. He had so many 
private virtues ! And had James the Second no private virtues ? 
Was Ohver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being 
judges, destitute of private virtues ? And what, after all, are the 
virtues ascribed to Charles ? A religious zeal, not more sincere 
than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and 
a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tomb- 
stones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A 
good father ! A good husband ! Ample apologies indeed for 
fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath ; 
and we are told that he kept his marriage vow ! We accuse 
him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions 
of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates ; and the 
defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed 
him ! We censure him for having violated the articles of the 
Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consid- 
eration, promised to observe them ; and we are informed that 
he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morn- 
ing ! It is to such considerations as these, together with his 
Vandyck dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that 
he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the 
present generation. 

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the com- 
mon phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily 
conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man 
and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the char- 
acter of an individual, leave out of our consideration his con- 
duct in the most important of all human relations ; and if in 
that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and de- 
ceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite 
of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel. 

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a 
topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. 
If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed 
them after the example of his predecessors. If he violated 



34 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

their privileges, it was because those privileges had not been 
accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed 
to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. 
This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is as dis- 
creditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a 
forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. 
Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. He had re- 
nounced the oppressive powers said to have been exercised 
by his predecessors, and he had renounced them for money. 
He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his 
own recent release. 

These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superflu- 
ous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how 
much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunder- 
stood will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a 
case of which the simplest statement is the strongest. 

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to 
take issue on the great points of the question. They content 
themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to 
which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail 
the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless 
violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names of 
the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts ; soldiers 
revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; upstarts, enriched 
by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable fire- 
sides and hereditary trees of the old gentry ; boys smashing 
the beautiful windows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked 
through the market-place ; Fifth-monarchy-men shouting for 
King Jesus ; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the 
fate of Agag ; — all these, they tell us, were the offspring of 
the Great Rebellion. 

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. 
These charges, were they infinitely more important, would not 
alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us to 
differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. 
Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They 



MILTON 35 

were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth 
the sacrifice ? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear 
and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of 
continued possession less horrible than the struggles of the 
tremendous exorcism .? 

If it were possible that a people brought up under an 
intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system with- 
out acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic 
power would be removed. We should, in that case, be com- 
pelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious 
effects on the intellectual and moral character of a nation. 
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But 
the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that 
a revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages 
will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of 
the people ; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will 
be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which 
they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil 
war. The heads of the church and state reaped only that 
which they had sown. The Government had prohibited free 
discussion : it had done its best to keep the people unac- 
quainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution 
was just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular igno- 
rance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key 
of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was 
because they had exacted an equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see 
the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, 
they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine 
countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a 
rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may 
be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or 
the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation 
first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such 
a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxi- 
cation. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion ; and, after 



36 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become 
more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. 
In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty 
are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are 
often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points 
the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is 
just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull 
down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice ; they point 
to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the 
frightful irregularity of the whole appearance ; and then ask 
in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort is to be 
found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would 
never be a good house or a good government in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysteri- 
ous law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain 
seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who 
injured her during the period of her disginse were for ever ex- 
cluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. 
But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and 
protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful 
and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their 
steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, 
made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit 
is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in 
disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are those who, 
having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful 
shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her 
beauty and her glory ! 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired 
freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom. When a pris- 
oner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day : he is 
unable to discriminate colours or recognise faces. But the 
remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accus- 
tom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty 
may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become 



MILTON 37 

half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and 
they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to 
reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile 
theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth 
cease to contend, and begin to coalesce ; and at length a 
system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it 
down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be 
free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy 
of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the 
water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty 
till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed 
wait for ever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of 
Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much 
that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associ- 
ates, stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We are not 
aware that the poet has been charged with personal partici- 
pation in any of the blameable excesses of that time. The 
favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which he 
pursued with regard to the execution of the King. Of that 
celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must 
say, in justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in 
it, and in justice more particularly to the eminent person who 
defended it, that nothing can be more absurd than the imputa- 
tions which, for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been 
the fashion to cast upon the Regicides. We have throughout 
abstained from appealing to first principles. We will not ap- 
peal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case of the 
Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between 
the execution of the father and the deposition of the son ? 
What constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former 
and not to the latter ? The King can do no wrong. If so, 
James was as innocent as Charles could have been. The min- 
ister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the Sovereign. 
If so, why not impeach Jeffreys and retain James ? The person 



38 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of a king is sacred. Was the person of James considered 
sacred at the Boyne ? To discharge cannon against an army in 
which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near 
to regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was 
put to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostili- 
ties of several years, and who had never been bound to him by 
any other tie than that which was common to them with all 
their fellow-citizens. Those who drove James from his throne, 
who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who first im- 
prisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who 
broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who 
pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire 
to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, 
and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two 
daughters. When we reflect on all these things, we are at a 
loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of 
November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant 
William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he 
became our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, 
contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Roval Martyr may be 
visited on themselves and their children. 

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles ; not 
because the constitution exempts the King from responsibility, 
for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have 
their exceptions ; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in 
his character, for we think that his sentence describes him with 
perfect justice as " a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public 
enemy " ; but because we are convinced that the measure was 
most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed 
was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom the allegiance 
of every Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The 
Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the 
father : they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great 
body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with 
feelings which, however unreasonable, no government could 
safely venture to outrage. 



MILTON 39 

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blameable, 
that of Milton appears to us in a very different hght. The deed 
was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred ; 
and the object was to render it as small as possible. We cen- 
sure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular 
opinion ; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change 
that opinion. The very feeling which would have restrained us 
from committing the act would have led us, after it had been 
committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and 
superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the 
thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it. 
But, for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished 
the people to approve of it when it was done. If anything 
more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of 
Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable performance is 
now with justice considered only as a beacon to word-catchers, 
who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the man who 
refuted it, the " ALneas: magni dextra," gives it all its fame 
with the present generation. In that age the state of- things 
was different. It was not then fully understood how vast an 
interval separates the mere classical scholar from the political 
philosopher. Nor can it be doubted that a treatise which, bear- 
ing the name of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental 
principles of all free governments, must, if suffered to remain 
unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the 
public mind. 

We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on 
which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct 
during the administration of the Protector, That an enthusi- 
astic votary of liberty should accept office under a military 
usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all 
the circumstances in which the country was then placed were 
extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. 
He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first 
fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never 
deserted it till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by 



40 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

force, it was not till he found that the few members who re- 
mained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were 
desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held 
only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Vene- 
tian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the 
head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave 
the country a constitution far more perfect than any which 
had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the 
representative system in a manner which has extorted praise 
even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded, indeed, 
the first place in the commonwealth ; but with powers scarcely 
so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American presi- 
dent. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of 
ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even 
reserving to himself a veto on its enactments ; and he did not 
require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his 
family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time 
and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself 
be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Wash- 
ington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corre- 
sponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he would 
have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. 
But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority 
under which they met, and that he was in danger of being de- 
prived of the restricted power which was absolutely necessary to 
his personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted 
a more arbitrary policy. 

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were 
at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the 
noble course which he had marked out for himself by the 
almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in 
common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of 
his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary 
and lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good 
constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But we 
suspect that, at the time of which we speak, the violence of 



MILTON 41 

religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy 
settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between 
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. 
That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares 
the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years 
which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the 
English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an 
irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. 
Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discus- 
sion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national 
honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better 
filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which 
stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the 
liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he 
had established, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- 
ment, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. 
His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of 
these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is 
probable that his institutions would have survived him, and 
that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His 
power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was 
upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, 
was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were also 
a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his 
decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted 
themselves to uphold his authority. His death dissolved the 
whole frame of society. The army rose against the Parlia- 
ment, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect 
raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presby- 
terians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, 
sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. 
Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one 
stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at 
the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, 
the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without 



42 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold 
hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the 
bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he 
might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, 
and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults, 
and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and 
the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the State. The 
government had just ability enough to deceive, and just 
religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were 
the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Mara- 
natha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship 
was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch ; and 
England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the 
blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to 
crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God 
and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the 
face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the 
head to the nations. 

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the 
public character of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large 
body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities 
which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for 
that purpose it is necessary to take a short survey of the 
parties into which the political world was at that time divided. 
We must premise that our observations are intended to apply 
only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one 
or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every 
faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp- 
followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its 
line of march in the hope of picking up something under its 
protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to 
exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which we 
are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who 
transferred their support to every government as it rose, who 
kissed the hand of the King in 1640, and spat in his face 
in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was 



MILTON 43 

inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to 
be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves' heads, or stuck up 
oak branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest 
shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. 
We take our estimate of parties from those who really 
deserved to be called partisans. 

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable 
body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. 
The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the 
surface. He that runs may read them ; nor have there been 
wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. 
For many years after the Restoration they were the theme of 
unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to 
the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the 
time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They 
were not men of letters ; they were, as a body, unpopular ; they 
could not defend themselves ; and the public would not take 
them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, 
without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and 
dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their 
sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long 
graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they 
introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learn- 
ing, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair 
game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone 
that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And he who 
approaches this subject should carefully guard against the 
influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so 
many excellent writers. 

Ecco il fontc del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
Hor qui tcner a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene. 

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed 
their measures through a long series of eventful years, who 
formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army 



44 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, 
and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedi- 
tion and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to 
every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. 
Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the 
signs of Freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that 
these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body 
to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable 
obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished 
some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good- 
breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was 
celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like 
Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which 
contain only the Death's-head and the Fool's-head, and fix on 
the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar 
character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and 
eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general 
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every 
event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing 
was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. 
To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the 
great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the 
ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure 
worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses 
of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze 
full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him 
face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial 
distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the 
meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with 
the boundless interval which separated the whole race from 
Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They 
recognized no title to superiority but his favour ; and, confident 
of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all 
the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with 
the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in 



MILTON 45 

the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the 
registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. 
If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 
Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; their diadems 
crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich 
and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with 
contempt : for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious 
treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by 
the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition 
of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being 
to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, 
on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before 
heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which 
should continue when heaven and earth should have passed 
away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly 
causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake 
empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake 
the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the 
Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested 
by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. 
He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by 
the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun 
had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the 
dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings 
of her expiring God. 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men - — the 
one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other 
proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in 
the dust before his Maker : but he set his foot on the neck of 
his king. In his devotional retirement he prayed with con- 
vulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by 
glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or 
the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the 
Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting 



46 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre 
of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitter- 
ness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But 
when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for 
war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no per- 
ceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the 
godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them 
but their groans- and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. 
But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in 
the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and 
an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought 
inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact 
the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on 
one subject made them tranquil on every other. One over- 
powering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, 
ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its 
charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures 
and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. 
Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds 
from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above 
the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might 
lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise 
means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron 
man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppres- 
sors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor 
lot in human infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and 
to pain ; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood 
by any barrier. 

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. 
We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the 
sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that 
the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after 
things too high for mortal reach ; and we know that, in spite 
of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst 
vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, 



MILTON 47 

that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their 
Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominies and their 
Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consid- 
eration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, 
an honest, and an useful body. 

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly 
because it was the cause of religion. There was another party, 
by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and 
ability, which acted with them on very different principles. 
We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the 
Heathens — men who were, in the phraseology of that time, 
doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious 
subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by 
the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as 
their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch 
as their examples. They seem to have borne some resem- 
blance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is 
not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them 
and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they 
sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is 
probable, imperceptibly adopted. 

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak 
of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect 
candour. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profli- 
gacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, 
whom the hope of licence and plunder attracted from all the 
dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who dis- 
graced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter 
discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. 
We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we 
do that the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and 
tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with compla- 
cency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a 
national pride in comparing them with the instruments which 
the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with 
the mutes who throng their antechambers, and the Janissaries 



48 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

who mount guard at their gates. Our royahst countrymen 
were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step 
and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines 
for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, in- 
toxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying 
without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a 
nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of indi- 
vidual independence was strong within them. They were 
indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion 
and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the 
venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as 
that of Duessa ; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought 
that they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they 
defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth, they 
scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. 
It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that 
they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so 
many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars 
at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though 
nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, 
they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries, 
those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many 
of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its 
virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect 
for women. They had far more both of profound and of 
polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more 
engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more 
elegant, and their households more cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which 
we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a 
freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the 
noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious 
union. From the Parliament and from tlie Court, from the con- 
venticle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and 
sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas 
revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew 



MILTON . 49 

to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the 
base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements 
were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived 

As ever in his great taskmaster's eye. 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty 
Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their 
contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tran- 
quillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic 
or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the 
contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, 
their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion 
to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had 
nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which 
were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant. 
There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of 
literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a 
more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his 
opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were 
such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristocracy. He 
was under the influence of all the feelings by which the 
gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was 
the master, and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he 
enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination : but he was not 
fascinated. He listened to the song of the sirens ; yet he 
glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He 
tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore about him a sure anti- 
dote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The 
illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his 
reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against the splen- 
dour, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the 
poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed 
in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on eccle- 
siastical architecture and music in the Petiseroso, which was 
published about the same time, will understand our meaning. 
This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, 



50 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

raises his character in our estimation, because it shows how 
many private tastes and feehngs he sacrificed, in order to do 
what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very 
struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents ; but his 
hand is firm. He does naught in hate, but all in honour. 
He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. 

That from which the public character of Milton derives its 
great and peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. 
If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a 
persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with 
others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the 
species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was 
then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is 
all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his 
contemporaries raised their voices against ship-money and the 
Star-chamber ; but there were few indeed who discerned 
the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and 
the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press 
and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were 
the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most im- 
portant. He was desirous that the people should think for 
themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be eman- 
cipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that 
of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions, 
overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves 
with pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, 
acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in 
their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected 
the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of 
conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting. 

Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless. 



MILTON 5 1 

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break 
the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchant- 
ment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public 
conduct was directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians : 
for this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle ; but 
he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He 
saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were 
hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the 
Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular 
chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the 
Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same great object, he 
attacked the licensing system, in that sublime treatise which 
every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, di- 
rected less against particular abuses than against those deeply- 
seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded — the 
servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of 
innovation. 

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing 
sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself the 
boldest literary services. He never came up in the rear, when 
the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He 
pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, 
he wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the 
bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he 
passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the 
crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. 
There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing 
the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in 
which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the 
pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours and to 
brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of 
his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he main- 
tained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of ex- 
pounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and 



52 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the 
great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal or derided 
as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He 
attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and 
beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility. 

Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. 

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, 
in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve 
the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted 
with the full power of the English language. They abound 
with passages compared with which the finest declamations of 
Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of 
cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not 
even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the great 
poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial 
works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in 
bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his 
own majestic language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and 
harping symphonies." 

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, 
to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some 
length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the 
nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of 
those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of 
Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. 
But the length to which our remarks have already extended 
renders this impossible. 

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves 
away from the subject. The days immediately following the 
publication of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set 
apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely 
be censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near 
his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we 
bring to it. While this book lies on our table we seem to be 



MILTON 53 

contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred 
and fifty years back. We can ahiiost fancy that we are visiting 
him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old 
organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we can catch 
the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day ; 
that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the 
proud and mournful history of his glory and his affiiction. 
We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we 
should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration 
with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon 
it, the earnestness with which we should endeavour to console 
him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the 
neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the 
eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or 
with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer 
to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed 
from his lips. 

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be 
ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we have 
written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We 
are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the 
dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of 
a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for 
want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. 
But there are a few characters which have stood the closest 
scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the 
furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in 
the balance and have not been found wanting, which have 
been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and 
which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription 
of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know 
how to prize ; and of these was Milton. The sight of his 
books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts 
resemble those celestial fruits a"nd flowers which the Virgin 
Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise 
to the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions 



54 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but 
by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are 
powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do 
we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings 
of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not 
indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched 
our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the 
public good, the .fortitude with which he endured every private 
calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temp- 
tations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots 
and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his 
country and with his fame. 



HISTORY 

The best historians of later times have been seduced from 
truth, not by their imagination, but by their reason. They far 
excel their predecessors in the art of deducing general princi- 
ples from facts. But unhappily they have fallen into the error 
of distorting facts to suit general principles. They arrive at 
a theory from looking at some of the phenomena ; and the 
remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit the theory. 
For this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert 
what is absolutely false ; for all questions in morals and politics 
are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which 
does not involve a contradiction in terms may by possibility be 
true ; and if all the circumstances which raise a probability in 
its favour be stated and enforced, and those which lead to an 
opposite conclusion be omitted or lightly passed over, it may 
appear to be demonstrated. In every human character and 
transaction there is a mixture of good and evil : a little exag- 
geration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a 
watchful and searching scepticism with respect to the evidence 
on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report 
or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or 
a tyrant of Henry the Fourth. 

This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valu- 
able works of modern historians. Herodotus tells his story 
like a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and preju- 
dices, unacquainted with the established rules of evidence, and 
uninstructed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what 
he imagines with what he has seen and heard, and brings out 
facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass. Hume is 
an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much 
more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circum- 
gtances which support his case ; he glides lightly over those 

55 



56 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

which are unfavourable to it ; his own witnesses are applauded 
and encouraged ; the statements which seem to throw discredit 
on them are controverted ; the contradictions into which they 
fall are explained away ; a clear and connected abstract of their 
evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side 
is scrutinised with the utmost severity ; every suspicious circum- 
stance is a ground for comment and invective ; what cannot 
be denied is extenuated or passed by without notice ; conces- 
sions even are sometimes made : but this insidious candour 
only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry. 

We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular 
writer of his class ; but the charge which we have brought 
against him is one to which all our most distinguished histo- 
rians are in some degree obnoxious. Gibbon, in particular, 
deserves very severe censure. Of all the numerous culprits, 
however, none is more deeply guilty than Mr. Mitford. We 
willingly acknowledge the obligations which are due to his 
talents and industry. The modern historians of Greece had 
been in the habit of writing as if the world had learned noth- 
ing new during the last sixteen hundred years. Instead of 
illustrating the events which they narrated by the philosophy 
of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by itself 
alone. They seemed to think that notions, long driven from 
every other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to 
occupy this last fastness. They considered all the ancient 
historians as equally authentic. They scarcely made any dis- 
tinction between him who related events at which he had 
himself been present, and him who, five hundred years after, 
composed a philosophic romance for a society which had in 
the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek, 
and all true ! The centuries which separated Plutarch from 
Thucydides seemed as nothing to men who lived in an age so 
remote. The distance of time produced an error similar to 
that which is sometimes produced by distance of place. There 
are many good ladies who think that all the people in India 
live together, and who charge a friend setting out for Calcutta 



HISTORY 57 

with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in 
the same manner, all the classics were contemporaries, 

Mr. Mitford certainly introduced great improvements ; he 
showed us that men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes 
told lies ; he showed us that ancient history might be related 
in such a manner as to furnish not only allusions to schoolboys, 
but important lessons to statesmen. From that love of theat- 
rical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned almost 
every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly 
free. But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungen- 
erous, led him substantially to violate truth in every page. 
Statements unfavourable to democracy are made with unh'esi- 
tating confidence, and with the utmost bitterness of language. 
Every charge brought against a monarch or an aristocracy is 
sifted with the utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some pal- 
liating supposition is suggested ; or we are at least reminded 
that some circumstances now unknown may have justified what 
at present appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by 
the same author in the same sentence ; their truth rests on 
the same testimony ; but the one supports the darling hypoth- 
esis, and the other seems inconsistent with it. The one is 
taken and the other is left. 

The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with 
theory is a vice not so unfavourable as at first sight it may 
appear to the interests of political science. We have compared 
the writers who indulge in it to advocates ; and we may add, 
that their conflicting fallacies, like those of advocates, correct 
each other. It has always been held, in the most enlightened 
nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial question most 
fairly when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly as 
possible, on the two opposite sides of it ; and we are inclined to 
think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior 
eloquence and dexterity will make the worse appear the better 
reason ; but it is at least certain that the judge will be compelled 
to contemplate the case under two different aspects. It is certain 
that no important consideration will altogether escape notice. 



58 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

This is at present the state of history. The poet laureate 
appears for the Church of England, Lingard for the Church of 
Rome. Brodie has moved to set aside the verdicts obtained 
by Hume ; and the cause in which Mitford succeeded is, we 
understand, about to be reheard. In the midst of these dis- 
putes, however, history proper, if we may use the term, is 
disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of 
Thucydides is nowhere to be found. 

While our historians are practising all the arts of contro- 
versy, they miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of 
interesting the affections and presenting pictures to the imagi- 
nation. That a writer may produce these effects without violat- 
ing truth is sufficiently proved by many excellent biographical 
works. The immense popularity which well-written books of 
this kind have acquired deserves the serious consideration of 
historians. Voltaire's Charles the TtvclftJi, Marmontel's Mem- 
oirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's account of Nelson, 
are perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. 
Whenever any tolerable book of the same description makes 
its appearance the circulating libraries are mobbed ; the book 
societies are in commotion ; the new novel lies uncut ; the mag- 
azines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In the 
meantime histories of great empires, written by men of eminent 
ability, lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious libraries. 

The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical 
contempt for the writers of memoirs. They think it beneath 
the dignity of men who describe the revolutions of nations to 
dwell on the details which constitute the charm of biography. 
They have imposed on themselves a code of conventional 
decencies as absurd as that which has been the bane of the 
French drama. The most characteristic and interesting cir- 
cumstances are omitted or softened down, because, as we are 
told, they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The maj- 
esty of history seems to resemble the majesty of the poor 
King of Spain, who died a martyr to ceremony because the 
proper dignitaries were not at hand to render him assistance. 



HISTORY 59 

That history would be more amusing if this etiquette were 
relaxed, will, we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be 
less dignified or less useful ? What do we mean when we say 
that one past event is important and another insignificant ? 
No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge 
of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations 
with respect to the future. A history which does not serve 
this purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and 
commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike tickets 
collected by Sir Matthew Mite. 

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hun- 
dreds of folio pages with copies of state papers, in which the 
same assertions and contradictions are repeated till the reader 
is overpowered with weariness, had condescended to be the 
Boswell of the Long Parliament. Let us suppose that he had 
exhibited to us the wise and lofty self-government of Hampden, 
leading while he seemed to follow, and propounding unanswer- 
able arguments in the strongest forms with the modest air of 
an inquirer anxious for information : the delusions which mis- 
led the noble spirit of Vane ; the coarse fanaticism which con- 
cealed the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, destined to control 
a mutinous army and a factious people, to abase the flag of 
Holland, to arrest the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold 
the balance firm between the rival monarchies of France and 
Spain. Let us suppose that he had made his Cavaliers and 
Roundheads talk in their own style ; that he had reported some 
of the ribaldry of Rupert's pages, and some of the cant of 
Harrison and Fleetwood. Would not his work in that case have 
been more interesting ? Would it not have been more accurate ? 

A history in which every particular incident may be true 
may on the whole be false. The circumstances which have 
most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of 
manners and morals, the transition of communities from pov- 
erty to wealth, from ignorance to knowledge, from ferocity to 
humanity — these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. 
Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased 



6o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or 
enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and re- 
corded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, 
in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand 
firesides. The upper-current of society presents no certain cri- 
terion by which we can judge of the direction in which the 
under-current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But we 
know that nations may be miserable amidst victories and pros- 
perous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers 
and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remem- 
ber how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single 
statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system. 

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on 
an elephant and laying down theories as to the whole inter- 
nal structure of the vast animal, from the phenomena of the 
hide. The comparison is unjust to the geologists ; but is 
very applicable to those historians who write as if the body 
politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of 
affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organization 
which lies deep below. 

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close 
of the Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity : at 
the close of the American war she is in a miserable and degraded 
condition ; as if the people were not on the whole as rich, as well 
governed, and as well educated at the latter period as at the 
former. We have read books called Histories of England, under 
the reign of George the Second, in which the rise of Methodism 
is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence this breed of 
authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still exist, the 
late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which 
will seem to imply that all government was at an end ; that 
the social contract was annulled ; and that the hand of every 
man was against his neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of 
the new cabinet educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. We 
are quite certain that misconceptions as gross prevail at this 
moment respecting many important parts of our annals. 



HISTORY 6l 

The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many re- 
spects, to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like 
the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees 
new fashions. He hears new modes of expression. His mind 
is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of 
morals, and of manners. But men may travel far, and return 
with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from 
their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know 
the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many royal 
houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times 
as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious 
stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, 
has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the 
stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight of 
the garter installed ; has cantered along Regent Street, has 
visited Saint Paul's, and noted down its dimensions ; and has 
then departed, thinking that he has seen England, He has, 
in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and public 
ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, 
of the fine shades of national character, of the practical opera- 
tion of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who 
would understand these things rightly must not confine his 
observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordi- 
nary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in 
their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of 
the exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain admit- 
tance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must 
bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from ex- 
ploring even the retreats of misery. He who wishes to under- 
stand the condition of mankind in former ages must proceed 
on the same principle. If he attends only to public transac- 
tions, to wars, congresses, and debates, his studies will be as 
unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene 
sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from having 
gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held 
formal conferences with a few great officers. 



62 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and 
spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, 
he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not au- 
thenticated by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection, 
rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions 
which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due 
subordination is observed : some transactions are prominent ; 
others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is 
increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the 
persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in 
which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of 
man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But 
he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no 
peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant 
for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the 
operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark 
the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be de- 
scribed, but will be made intimately known to us. The changes 
of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general 
phrases or a few extracts from statistical documents, but by 
appropriate images presented in every line. 

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history 
of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, 
the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But 
with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm 
of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beauti- 
ful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of 
the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master. It 
is so far superior to every other in the church that, according 
to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from morti- 
fication. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those 
fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown be- 
hind them in a manner which may well excite their envy. He 
has constructed out of their gleanings works which, even con- 
sidered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a 
truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the 



HISTORY 63 

novelist has appropriated. The history of the government, and 
the history of the people, would be exhibited in that mode in 
which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable con- 
junction and intermixture. We should not then have to look 
for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for 
their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James 
in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel. 

The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with 
colouring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find 
ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, 
and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Chaucer from the 
Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest 
— from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from 
the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the beg- 
ging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders — the 
stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory and the 
high-mass in its chapel — the manor-house, with its hunting 
and hawking — the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, 
the trumpets and the cloth of gold — would give truth and life 
to the representation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight 
touches, the importance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce 
and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the de- 
graded villain. The revival of letters would not merely be de- 
scribed in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in 
innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager 
appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from 
the fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should see, not 
merely a schism which changed the ecclesiastical constitution of 
England and the mutual relations of the European powers, but 
a moral war which raged in every family, which set the father 
against the son and the son against the father, the mother 
against the daughter and the daughter against the mother. 
Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should 
have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous 
youth to his savage and imperious old age. We should perceive 
the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions in a 



64 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous ; and to the last 
we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper 
which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling 
with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. 
We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her 
strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she 
never trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she never 
dismissed, uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities 
of both her parents — the coquetry, the caprice, the petty 
malice of Anne — the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. 
We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might pro- 
duce a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking 
as that in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single 
trait not authenticated by ample testimony. In the meantime, 
we should see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the conven- 
iences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where 
nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them, 
gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the 
oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We 
should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of 
fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant 
improved, and his hut more commodiously furnished. We 
should see those opinions and feelings which produced the 
great struggle against the House of Stuart slowly growing up 
in the bosom of private families, before they manifested them- 
selves in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil 
war. Those skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely 
would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with per- 
spicuous conciseness. They are merely connecting links. But 
the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the 
brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, 
dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal 
cause — the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, 
the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, 
the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the 
affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked 



HISTORY 65 

the Puritans — the valour, the pohcy, the pubhc spirit, which 
lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises — the dreams of the 
raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of 
the philosophic Republican — all these would enter into the rep- 
resentation, and render it at once more exact and more striking. 

The instruction derived from history thus written would be 
of a vivid and practical character. It would be received by the 
imagination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely 
traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, 
would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. 
As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and 
most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like 
supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact 
is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of 
moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the 
community, and which originally proceed far before their prog- 
ress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowl- 
edge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely 
necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative 
defective in this respect is as useless as a medical treatise 
which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early 
stage of a disease, and mention only what occurs when the 
patient is beyond the reach of remedies. 

A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, 
would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind powers 
scarcely compatible with each other must be tempered into an 
exquisite harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakspeare 
or another Homer. The highest excellence to which any single 
faculty can be brought would be less surprising than such a 
happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contem- 
plation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless 
employment of the mind. It cannot, indeed, produce perfec- 
tion ; but it produces improvement and nourishes that generous 
and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent with the 
strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while it exalts our 
conceptions of the art, does not render us unjust to the artist. 



BYRON 

It is always difficult to separate the literary character of a 
man who lives in our own time from his personal character. 
It is peculiarly difficult to make this separation in the case of 
Lord Byron ; -for it is scarcely too much to say that Lord 
Byron never wrote without some reference, direct or indirect, 
to himself. The interest excited by the events of his life 
mingles itself in our minds, and probably in the minds of 
almost all our readers, with the interest which properly belongs 
to his works. A generation must pass away before it will be 
possible to form a fair judgment of his books, considered 
merely as books. At present they are not only books, but 
relics. We will, however, venture, though with unfeigned 
diffidence, to offer some desultory remarks on his poetry. 

His lot was cast in the time of a great literary revolution. 
That poetical dynasty which had dethroned the successors of 
Shakspeare and Spenser was, in its turn, dethroned by a 
race who represented themselves as heirs of the ancient line, 
so long dispossessed by usurpers. The real nature of this 
revolution has not, we think, been comprehended by the great 
majority of those who concurred in it. 

Wherein especially does the poetry of our times differ from 
that of the last century ? Ninety-nine persons out of a hun- 
dred would answer that the poetry of the last century was 
correct, but cold and mechanical, and that the poetry of our 
time, though wild and irregular, presented far more vivid 
images, and excited the passions far more strongly than that 
of Parnell, of Addison, or of Pope. In the same manner we 
constantly hear it said that the poets of the age of Elizabeth 
had far more genius, but far less correctness, than those of 
the age of Anne. It seems to be taken for granted that there 
is some incompatibility, some antithesis between correctness 

66 



BYRON 67 

and creative power. We rather suspect that this notion arises 
merely from an abuse of words, and that it has been the 
parent of many of the fallacies which perplex the science 
of criticism. 

What is meant by correctness in poetry .? If by correctness 
be meant the conforming to rules which have their foundation 
in truth and in the principles of human nature, then correct- 
ness is only another name for excellence. If by correctness 
be meant the conforming to rules purely arbitrary, correctness 
may be another name for dulness and absurdity. 

A writer who describes visible objects falsely and violates 
the propriety of character, a writer who makes the mountains 
"nod their drowsy heads" at night, or a dying man take 
leave of the world with a rant like that of Maximin, may be 
said, in the high and just sense of the phrase, to write incor- 
rectly. He violates the first great law of his art. His imitation 
is altogether unlike the thing imitated. The four poets who 
are most eminently free from incorrectness of this description 
are Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton, They are, there- 
fore, in one sense, and that the best sense, the most correct 
of poets. 

When it is said that Virgil, though he had less genius than 
Homer, was a more correct writer, what sense is attached to 
the word correctness } Is it meant that the story of the 
^neid is developed more skilfully than that of the Odyssey ? 
that the Roman describes the face of the external world, or the 
emotions of the mind, more accurately than the Greek .? that 
the characters of Achates and Mnestheus are more nicely 
discriminated, and more consistently supported, than those of 
Achilles, of Nestor, and of Ulysses .? The fact incontestably 
is that, for every violation of the fundamental laws of poetry 
which can be found in Homer, it would be easy to find 
twenty in Virgil. 

Troilus and Cressida is perhaps of all the plays of 
Shakspeare that which is commonly considered as the most 
incorrect. Yet it seems to us infinitely more correct, in the 



68 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

sound sense of the term, than what are called the most correct 
plays of the most correct dramatists. Compare it, for example, 
with the IpJdgcnie of Racine. We are sure that the Greeks 
of Shakspeare bear a far greater resemblance than the Greeks 
of Racine to the real Greeks who besieged Troy ; and for 
this reason, that the Greeks of Shakspeare are human beings, 
and the Greeks of Racine mere names, mere words printed 
in capitals at the head of paragraphs of declamation. Racine, 
it is true, would have shuddered at the thought of making 
a warrior at the siege of Troy quote Aristotle. But of what 
use is it to avoid a single anachronism, when the whole play 
is one anachronism, the sentiments and phrases of Versailles 
in the camp of Aulis } 

In the sense in which we are now using the word correct- 
ness, we think that Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, 
Mr. Coleridge, are far more correct poets than those who are 
commonly extolled as the models of correctness — Pope, for 
example, and Addison. The single description of. a moonlight 
night in Pope's Iliad contains more inaccuracies than can be 
found in all the Excursion. There is not a single scene in 
Cato, in which all that conduces to poetical illusion, all the 
propriety of character, of language, of situation, is not more 
grossly violated than in any part of the Lay of the Last 
Minstfcl. No man can possibly think that the Romans of 
Addison resemble the real Romans so closely as the moss- 
troopers of Scott resemble the real moss-troopers. Wat 
Tinlinn and William of Deloraine are not, it is true, persons 
of so much dignity as Cato. But the dignity of the persons 
represented has as little to do with the correctness of poetry 
as with the correctness of painting. We prefer a gipsy by 
Reynolds to his Majesty's head on a sign-post, and a Borderer 
by Scott to a Senator by Addison. 

In what sense, then, is the word correctness used by those 
who say, with the author of the Pursuits of Literature, that 
Pope was the most correct of English Poets, and that next to 
Pope came the late Mr. Gifford ? What is the nature and 



BYRON 69 

value of that correctness, the praise of which is denied to 
Macbeth, to Lear, and to Othello, and given to Hoole's trans- 
lations and to all the Seatonian prize-poems ? We can dis- 
cover no eternal rule, no rule founded in reason and in the 
nature of things, which Shakspeare does not observe much 
more strictly than Pope. But if by correctness be meant the 
conforming to a narrow legislation which, while lenient to the 
mala in se, multiplies, without a shadow of a reason, the mala 
prohibita — if by correctness be meant a strict attention to 
certain ceremonious observances, which are no more essential 
to poetry than etiquette to good government, or than the 
washings of a Pharisee to devotion — then, assuredly, Pope may 
be a more correct poet than Shakspeare ; and, if the code 
were a little altered, Colley Gibber might be a more correct 
poet than Pope. But it may well be doubted whether this 
kind of correctness be a merit, nay, whether it be not an 
absolute fault. 

It would be amusing to make a digest of the irrational laws 
which bad critics have framed for the government of poets. 
First in celebrity and in absurdity stand the dramatic unities of 
place and time. No human being has ever been able to find 
anything that could, even by courtesy, be called an argument 
for these unities, except that they have been deduced from the 
general practice of the Greeks. It requires no very profound 
examination to discover that the Greek dramas, often admirable 
as compositions, are, as exhibitions of human character and 
human life, far inferior to the English plays of the age of 
Elizabeth. Every scholar knows that the dramatic part of the 
Athenian tragedies was at first subordinate to the lyrical part. 
It would, therefore, have been little less than a miracle if the 
laws of the Athenian stage had been found to suit plays in 
which there was no chorus. All the greatest masterpieces of 
the dramatic art have been composed in direct violation of the 
unities, and could never have been composed if the unities had 
not been violated. It is clear, for example, that such a character 
as that of Hamlet could never have been developed within the 



70 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

limits to which Alfieri confined himself. Yet such was the 
reverence of literary men during the last century for these 
unities that Johnson, who, much to his honour, took the oppo- 
site side, was, as he says "frightened at his own temerity," 
and " afraid to stand against the authorities which might be 
produced against him," 

There are other rules of the same kind without end. 
" Shakspeare," says Rymer, "ought not to have made Othello 
black ; for the hero of a tragedy ought always to be white." 
" Milton," says another critic, " ought not to have taken Adam 
for his hero ; for the hero of an epic poem ought always to be 
victorious." "Milton," says another, "ought not to have put 
so many similes into his first book ; for the first book of an 
epic poem ought always to be the most unadorned. There are 
no similes in the first book of the Iliad!' " Milton," says 
another, " ought not to have placed in an epic poem such lines 
as these : 

While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither." 

And why not } The critic is ready with a reason, a lady's 
reason, "Such lines," says he, "are not, it must be allowed, 
unpleasing to the ear ; but the redundant syllable ought to be 
confined to the drama, and not admitted into epic poetry," 
As to the redundant syllable in heroic rhyme on serious sub- 
jects, it has been, from the time of Pope downward, proscribed 
by the general consent of all the correct school. No magazine 
would have admitted so incorrect a couplet as that of Drayton : 

As when we lived untouch 'd with these disgraces, 
When as our kingdom was our dear embraces. 

Another law of heroic rhyme, which fifty years ago was con- 
sidered as fundamental, was that there should be a pause, a 
comma at least, at the end of every couplet. It was also 
provided that there should never be a full stop except at the 
end of a line. Well do we remember to have heard a most 
correct judge of poetry revile Mr, Rogers for the incorrectness 
of that most sweet and graceful passage : 



. BYRON 71 

Such grief was ours — it seems but yesterday — 
When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay, 
'T was thine, Maria, thine without a sigh 
At midnight in a sister's arms to die. 
Oh thou wert lovely ; lovely was thy frame. 
And pure thy spirit as from heaven it came : 
And when recalled to join the blest above 
Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love. 
Nursing the young to health. In happier hours, 
When idle Fancy wove luxuriant flowers. 
Once in thy mirth thou badst me write on thee ; 
And now I write what thou shalt never see. 

Sir Roger Newdigate is fairly entitled, we think, to be ranked 
among the great critics of this school. He made a law that 
none of the poems written for the prize which he established 
at Oxford should exceed fifty lines. This law seems to us to 
have at least as much foundation in reason as any of those 
which we have mentioned ; nay, much more, for the world, we 
believe, is pretty well agreed in thinking that the shorter a 
prize-poem is, the better. 

We do not see why we should not make a few more rules of 
the same kind ; why we should not enact that the number of 
scenes in every act shall be three or some multiple of three, 
that the number of lines in every scene shall be an exact 
square, that the dramatis personcE shall never be more or fewer 
than sixteen, and that, in heroic rhymes, every thirty-sixth line 
shall have twelve syllables. If we were to lay down these 
canons, and to call Pope, Goldsmith, and Addison incorrect 
writers for not having complied with our whims, we should act 
precisely as those critics act who find incorrectness in the 
magnificent imagery and the varied music of Coleridge and 
Shelley. 

The correctness which the last century prized so much 
resembles the correctness of those pictures of the garden of 
Eden which we see in old Bibles. We have an exact square 
enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, 
each with a convenient bridge in the centre, rectangular beds 



72 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of flowers, a long canal, neatly bricked and railed in, the tree 
of knowledge clipped like one of the limes behind the Tuilleries, 
standing in the centre of the grand alley, the snake twined 
round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, 
and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them. In 
one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, the 
squares are correct ; the circles are correct ; the man and the 
woman are in a most correct line with the tree ; and the snake 
forms a most correct spiral. 

But if there were a painter so gifted that he could place on 
the canvas that glorious paradise seen by the interior eye of 
him whose outward sight had failed with long watching and 
labouring for liberty and truth — if there were a painter who 
could set before us the mazes of the sapphire brook, the lake 
with its fringe of myrtles, the flowery meadows, the grottoes 
overhung by vines, the forests shining with Hesperian fruit 
and with the plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of 
that nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleeping 
lovers — what should we think of a connoisseur, who should tell 
us that this painting, though finer than the absurd picture in 
the old Bible, was not so correct ? Surely we should answer. 
It is both finer and more correct ; and it is finer because it is 
more correct. It is not made up of correctly drawn diagrams ; 
but it is a correct painting, a worthy representation of that 
which it is intended to represent. 

It is not in the fine arts alone that this false correctness is 
prized by narrow-minded men — by men who cannot distinguish 
means from ends, or what is accidental from what is essential. 
M. Jourdain admired correctness in fencing. "You had no 
business to hit me then. You must never thrust in quart till 
you have thrust in tierce." M. Tomes liked correctness in 
medical practice. " I stand up for Artemius. That he killed 
his patient is plain enough. But still he acted quite according 
to rule. A man dead is a man dead, and there is an end of 
the matter. But if rules are to be broken, there is no saying 
what consequences may follow." We have heard of an old 



BYRON 73 

German officer who was a great admirer of correctness in 
military operations. He used to revile Bonaparte for spoiling 
the science of war, which had been carried to such exquisite 
perfection by Marshal Daun. " In my youth we used to march 
and countermarch all the summer without gaining or losing a 
square league, and then we went into winter-quarters. And 
now comes an ignorant, hot-headed young man, who flies 
about from Boulogne to Ulm, and from Ulm to the middle of 
Moravia, and fights battles in December. The whole system 
of his tactics is monstrously incorrect." The world is of 
opinion, in spite of critics like these, that the end of fencing 
is to hit, that the end of medicine is to cure, that the end of 
war is to conquer, and that those means are the most correct 
which best accomplish the ends. 

And has poetry no end, no eternal and immutable prin- 
ciples ? Is poetry, like heraldry, mere matter of arbitrary 
regulation ? The heralds tell us that certain scutcheons and 
bearings denote certain conditions, and that to put colours on 
colours, or metals on metals, is false blazonry. If all this were 
reversed, if every coat of arms in Europe were new-fashioned, 
if it were decreed that or should never be placed but on argent, 
or argent but on or, that illegitimacy should be denoted by a 
lozenge, and widowhood by a bend, the new science would be 
just as good as the old science, because both the new and the 
old would be good for nothing. The mummery of Portcullis 
and Rouge Dragon, as it has no other value than that which 
caprice has assigned to it, may well submit to any laws 
which caprice may impose on it. But it is not so with that 
great imitative art, to the power of which all ages, the rudest 
and the most enlightened, bear witness. Since its first great 
masterpieces were produced, everything that is changeable in 
this world has been changed. Civilisation has been gained, 
lost, gained again. Religions, and languages, and forms of 
government, and usages of private life, and modes of thinking, 
all have undergone a succession of revolutions. Everything 
has passed away but the great features of nature, and the 



74 SELECTIONS P^ROM MACAULAY 

heart of man, and the miracles of that art of which it is the 
office to reflect back the heart of man and the features of 
nature. Those two strange old poems, the wonder of ninety 
generations, still retain all their freshness. They still command 
the veneration of minds enriched by the literature of many 
nations and ages. They are still, even in wretched translations, 
the delight of school-boys. Having survived ten thousand 
capricious fashions, having seen successive codes of criticism 
become obsolete,- they still remain to us, immortal with the 
immortality of truth, the same when perused in the study of 
an English scholar, as when they were first chanted at the 
banquets of the Ionian princes. 

Poetry is, as was said more than two thousand years ago, 
imitation. It is an art analogous in many respects to the art 
of painting, sculpture, and acting. The imitations of the 
painter, the sculptor, and the actor are, indeed, within certain 
limits, more perfect than those of the poet. The machinery 
which the poet employs consists merely of words ; and words 
cannot, even when employed by such an artist as Homer or 
Dante, present to the mind images of visible objects quite so 
lively and exact as those which we carry away from looking on 
the works of the brush and the chisel. But, on the other hand, 
the range of poetry is infinitely wider than that of any other 
imitative art, or than that of all the other imitative arts together. 
The sculptor can imitate only form ; the painter only form and 
colour ; the actor, until the poet supplies him with words, only 
form, colour, and motion. Poetry holds the outer world in 
common with the other arts. The heart of man is the province 
of poetry, and of poetry alone. The painter, the sculptor, and 
the actor can exhibit no more of human passion and character 
than that small portion which overflows into the gesture and 
the face, always an imperfect, often a deceitful, sign of that 
which is within. The deeper and more complex parts of 
human nature can be exhibited by means of words alone. 
Thus the objects of the imitation of poetry are the whole 
external and the whole internal universe, the face of nature, 



BYRON 75 

the vicissitudes of fortune, man as he is in himself, man as he 
appears in society, all things which really exist, all things of 
which we can form an image in our minds by combining 
together parts of things which really exist. The domain of 
this imperial art is commensurate with the imaginative faculty. 

An art essentially imitative ought not surely to be subjected 
to rules which tend to make its imitations less perfect than they 
otherwise would be ; and those who obey such rules ought to 
be called, not correct, but incorrect artists. The true way to 
judge of the rules by which English poetry was governed during 
the last century is to look at the effects which they produced. 

It was in 1780 that Johnson completed his Lives of the Poets. 
He tells us in that work that, since the time of Dryden, English 
poetry had shown no tendency to relapse into its original 
savageness, that its language had been refined, its numbers 
tuned, and its sentiments improved. It may perhaps be doubted 
whether the nation had any great reason to exult in the refine- 
ments and improvements which gave it Douglas for Othello, 
and the Tritimphs of Temper for the Fairy Queen. 

It was during the thirty years which preceded the appearance 
of Johnson's Lives that the diction and versification of English 
poetry were, in the sense in which the word is commonly 
used, most correct. Those thirty years are, as respects poetry, 
the most deplorable part of our literary history. They have 
indeed bequeathed to us scarcely any poetry which deserves to 
be remembered. Two or three hundred lines of Gray, twice as 
many of Goldsmith, a few stanzas of Beattie and Collins, a few 
strophes of Mason, and a few clever prologues and satires, were 
the masterpieces of this age of consummate excellence. They 
may all be printed in one volume, and that volume would be 
by no means a volume of extraordinary merit. It would contain 
no poetry of the very highest class, and little which could be 
placed very high in the second class. The Paradise Regained 
or Coinus would outweigh it all. 

At last, when poetry had fallen into such utter decay that 
Mr. Hayley was thought a great poet, it began to appear that 



'je SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the excess of the evil was about to work the cure. Men 
became tired of an insipid conformity to a standard which 
derived no authority from nature or reason. A shallow criticism 
had taught them to ascribe a superstitious value to the spurious 
correctness of poetasters. A deeper criticism brought them 
back to the true correctness of the first great masters. The 
eternal laws of poetry regained their power, and the temporary 
fashions which had superseded those laws went after the wig 
of Lovelace and. the hoop of Clarissa. 

It was in a cold andi barren season that the seeds of that rich 
harvest which we have reaped were first sown. While poetry 
was every year becoming more feeble and more mechanical ; 
while the monotonous versification which Pope had introduced, 
no longer redeemed by his brilliant wit and his compactness of 
expression, palled on the ear of the public ; the great works 
of the old masters were every day attracting more and more 
of the admiration which they deserved. The plays of Shak- 
speare were better acted, better edited, and better known than 
they had ever been. Our fine ancient ballads were again read 
with pleasure, and it became a fashion to imitate them. Many 
of the imitations were altogether contemptible ; but they 
showed that men had at least begun to admire the excellence 
which they could not rival. A literary revolution was evidently 
at hand. There was a ferment in the minds of men, a vague 
craving for something new, a disposition to hail with delight 
anything which might at first sight wear the appearance of 
originality. A reforming age is always fertile of impostors. 
The same excited state of public feeling which produced the 
great separation from the see of Rome produced also the 
excesses of the Anabaptists. The same stir in the public mind 
of Europe which overthrew the abuses of the old French 
Government produced the Jacobins and Theophilanthropists. 
Macpherson and Delia Crusca were to the true reformers of 
English poetry what Knipperdoling was to Luther, or Clootz 
to Turgot. The success of Chatterton's forgeries and of the 
far more contemptible forgeries Of Ireland showed that people 



BYRON jy 

had begun to love the old poetry well, though not wisely. The 
public was never more disposed to believe stories without 
evidence, and to admire books without merit. Anything which 
could break the dull monotony of the correct school was 
acceptable. 

The forerunner of the great restoration of our literature was 
Cowper. His literary career began and ended at nearly the 
same time with that of Alfieri. A comparison between Alfieri 
and Cowper may at first sight appear as strange as that which 
a loyal Presbyterian minister is said to have made in 1745 
between George the Second and Enoch. It may seem that 
the gentle, shy, melancholy Calvinist, whose spirit had been 
broken by fagging at school, who had not courage to earn a 
livelihood by reading the titles of bills in the House of Lords, 
and whose favourite associates were a blind old lady and an 
evangelical divine, could have nothing in common with the 
haughty, ardent, and voluptuous nobleman, the horse-jockey, 
the libertine, who fought Lord Ligonier in Hyde Park, and 
robbed the Pretender of his queen. But though the private 
lives of these remarkable men present scarcely any points of 
resemblance, their literary lives bear a close analogy to each 
other. They both found poetry in its lowest state of degrada- 
tion, feeble, artificial, and altogether nerveless. They both 
possessed precisely the talents which fitted them for the task 
of raising it from that deep abasement. They cannot, in strict- 
ness, be called great poets. They had not in any very high 
degree the creative power. 

The vision and the faculty divine ; 

but they had great vigour of thought, great v.'armth of feeling, 
and what, in their circumstances, was above all things impor- 
tant — a manliness of taste which approached to roughness. 
They did not deal in mechanical versification and conventional 
phrases. They wrote concerning things the thought of which 
set their hearts on fire ; and thus what they wrote, even when 
it wanted every other grace, had that inimitable grace which 



78 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

sincerity and strong passion impart to the rudest and most 
homely compositions. Eacli of them sought for inspiration in 
a noble and affecting subject, fertile of images which had not 
yet been hackneyed. Liberty was the muse of Alfieri ; Religion 
was the muse of Cowper. The same truth is found in their 
lighter pieces. They were not among those who deprecated 
the severity, or deplored the absence, of an unreal mistress in 
melodious commonplaces. Instead of raving about imaginary 
Chloes and Sylvias, Cowper wrote of Mrs. Unwin's knitting- 
needles. The only love-verses of Alfieri were addressed to 
one whom he truly and passionately loved. " Tutte le rime 
amorose che seguono," says he, "tutte sono per essa, e ben 
sue, e di lei solamente ; poiche mai d'altra donna per certo 
con cantero." 

These great men were not free from affectation ; but their 
affectation was directly- opposed to the affectation which 
generally prevailed. Each of them expressed in strong and 
bitter language the contempt which he felt for the effeminate 
poetasters who were in fashion both in England and in Italy. 
Cowper complains that 

Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ, 
The substitute for genius, taste, and wit. 

He praised Pope ; yet he regretted that Pope had 

Made poetry a mere mechanic art, 

And every warbler had his tune by heart. 

Alfieri speaks with similar scorn of the tragedies of his prede- 
cessors. " Mi cadevano dalle mani per la languidezza, trivialita 
e prolissita dei modi e del verso, senza parlare poi della sner- 
vatezza dei pensieri. Or perche mai questa nostra divina lingua, 
si maschia anco, ed energica, e feroce, in bocca di Dante, 
dovra ella farsi cosi sbiadata ed eunuca nel dialogo tragico ? " 
To men thus sick of the languid manner of their contem- 
poraries ruggedness seemed a venial fault, or rather a positive 
merit. In their hatred of meretricious ornament, and of what 
Cowper calls " creamy smoothness," they erred on the opposite 



BYRON 79 

side. Their style was too austere, their versification too harsh. 
It is not easy, however, to overrate the service which they 
rendered to Hterature. The intrinsic value of their poems 
is considerable. But the example which they set of mutiny 
against an absurd system was invaluable. The part which they 
performed was rather that of Moses than that of Joshua. 
They opened the house of bondage, but they did not enter 
the promised land. 

During the twenty years which followed the death of Cow- 
per the revolution in English poetry was fully consummated. 
None of the writers of this period, not even Sir Walter Scott, 
contributed so much to the consummation as Lord Byron. Yet 
Lord Byron contributed to it unwillingly, and with constant 
self-reproach and shame. All his tastes and inclinations led 
him to take part with the school of poetry which was going 
out against the school which was coming in. Of Pope himself 
he spoke with extravagant admiration. He did not venture 
directly to say that the little man of Twickenham was a greater 
poet than Shakspeare or Milton, but he hinted pretty clearly 
that he thought so. Of his contemporaries, scarcely any had 
so much of his admiration as Mr. Gifford, who, considered as 
a poet, was merely Pope, without Pope's wit and fancy, and 
whose satires are decidedly inferior in vigour and poignancy to 
the very imperfect juvenile performance of Lord Byron him- 
self. He now and then praised Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. 
Coleridge, but ungraciously and without cordiality. When he 
attacked them he brought his whole soul to the work. Of the 
most elaborate of Mr. Wordsworth's poems he could find noth- 
ing to say, but that it was " clumsy, and frowsy, and his aver- 
sion." Peter Bell excited his spleen to such a degree that he 
evoked the shades of Pope and Dryden, and demanded of 
them whether it were possible that such trash could evade 
contempt .? In his heart he thought his own Pilgrimage of 
Harold inferior to his Imitation of Horace' s Art of Poetry, 
a feeble echo of Pope and Johnson. This insipid performance 
he repeatedly designed to publish, and was withheld only by 



So SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the solicitations of his friends. He has distinctly declared his 
approbation of the unities, the most absurd laws by which gen- 
ius was ever held in servitude. In one of his works — we think 
in his letter to Mr. Bowles — he compares the poetry of the 
eighteenth century to the Parthenon, and that of the nineteenth 
to a Turkish mosque, and boasts that, though he had assisted 
his contemporaries in building their grotesque and barbarous 
edifice, he had never joined them in defacing the remains of 
a chaster and more graceful architecture. In another letter he 
compares the change which had recently passed on English 
poetry to the decay of Latin poetry after the Augustan age. 
In the time of Pope, he tells his friend, it was all Horace 
with us. It is all Claudian now. 

For the great old masters of the art he had no very enthu- 
siastic veneration. In his letter to Mr. Bowles he uses expres- 
sions which clearly indicate that he preferred Pope's Iliad to 
the original. Mr. Moore confesses that his friend was no very 
fervent admirer of Shakspeare. Of all the poets of the first 
class Lord Byron seems to have admired Dante and Milton 
most. Yet in the fourth canto of CJiildc Harold, he places 
Tasso, a writer not merely inferior to them, but of quite a 
different order of mind, on at least a footing of equality with 
them. Mr. Hunt is, we suspect, quite correct in saying that 
Lord Byron could see little or no merit in Spenser. 

But Byron the critic and Byron the poet were two very dif- 
ferent men. The effects of the noble writer's theory may in- 
deed often be traced in his practice. But his disposition led 
him to accommodate himself to the literary taste of the age in 
which he lived ; and his talents would have enabled him to 
accommodate himself to the taste of any age. Though he said 
much of his contempt for mankind, and though he boasted 
that amidst the inconstancy of fortune and of fame he was all- 
sufficient to himself, his literary career indicated nothing of 
that lonely and unsocial pride which he affected. We cannot 
conceive him, like Milton or Wordsworth, defying the criticism 
of his contemporaries, retorting their scorn, and labouring on 



BYRON 8 I 

a poem in the full assurance that it would be unpopular, and 
in the full assurance that it would be immortal. He has said, 
by the mouth of one of his heroes, in speaking of political 
greatness, that "he must serve who fain would sway"; and 
this he assigns as a reason for not entering into political life. 
He did not consider that the sway which he had exercised in 
literature had been purchased by servitude, by the sacrifice of 
his own taste to the taste of the public. 

He was the creature of his age ; and whenever he had lived 
he would have been the creature of his age. Under Charles 
the First, Byron would have been more quaint than Donne. 
Under Charles the Second, the rants of Byron's rhyming plays 
would have pitted it, boxed it, and galleried it, with those of 
any Bayes or Bilboa. Under George the First, the monotonous 
smoothness of Byron's versification and the terseness of his 
expression would have made Pope himself envious. 

As it was, he was the man of the last thirteen years of the 
eighteenth century, and of the first twenty-three years of the 
nineteenth century. He belonged half to the old, and half to 
the new school of poetry. His personal taste led him to the 
former ; his thirst of praise to the latter ; his talents were 
equally suited to both. His fame was a common ground on 
which the zealots on both sides — Gifford for example, and 
Shelley — might meet. He was the representative, not of either 
literary party, but of both at once, and of their conflict, and of 
the victory by which that conflict was. terminated. His poetry 
fills and measures the whole of the vast interval through which 
our literature has moved since the time of Johnson. It touches 
the Essay on Man at the one extremity, and the Excursion at 
the other. 

There are several parallel instances in literary history. 
Voltaire, for example, was the connecting link between the 
France of Louis the Fourteenth and the France of Louis the 
Sixteenth, between Racine and Boileau on the one side, and 
Condorcet and Beaumarchais on the other. He, like Lord 
Byron, put himself at the head of an intellectual revolution, 



82 SELECTION^ FROM MACAULAY 

dreading it all the time, murmuring at it, sneering at it, yet 
choosing rather to move before his age in any direction than 
to be left behind and forgotten. Dryden was the connecting 
link between the literature of the age of James the First and 
the literature of the age of Anne. Oromasdes and Arimanes 
fought for him. Arimanes carried him off. But his heart was 
to the last with Oromasdes. Lord Byron was, in the same 
manner, the mediator between two generations, between two 
hostile poetical sects. Though always sneering at Mr. Words- 
worth, he was yet, though perhaps unconsciously, the inter- 
preter between Mr. Wordsworth and the multitude. In the 
Lyrical Ballads and the Exciirsion Mr. Wordsworth appeared 
as the high-priest of a worship of which nature was the idol. 
No poems have ever indicated a more exquisite perception of 
the beauty of the outer world or a more passionate love and 
reverence for that beauty. Yet they were not popular ; and it 
is not likely that they ever will be popular as the poetry of 
Sir Walter Scott is popular. The feeling which pervaded 
them was too deep for general sympathy. Their style was 
often too mysterious for general comprehension. They made a 
few esoteric disciples, and many scoffers. Lord Byron founded 
what may be called an exoteric Lake school ; and all the 
readers of verse in England, we might say in Europe, hastened 
to sit at his feet. What Mr. Wordsworth had said like a 
recluse. Lord Byron said like a man of the world, with less 
profound feeling, but with more perspicuity, energy, and con- 
ciseness. We would refer our readers to the last two cantos 
of CJiilde Harold ^nd to Manfred, in proof of these observations. 
Lord Byron, like Mr. Wordsworth, had nothing dramatic in 
his genius. He was, indeed, the reverse of a great dramatist, 
the very antithesis to a great dramatist. All his characters — 
Harold looking on the sky, from which his country and the 
sun are disappearing together, the Giaour standing apart in 
the gloom of the side aisle, and casting a haggard scowl from 
under his long hood at the crucifix and the censer, Conrad 
leaning on his sword by the watch-tower, Lara smiling on the 



BYRON 83 

dancers, Alp gazing steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes 
before the moon, Manfred wandering among the precipices of 
Berne, Azzo on the judgment-seat, Ugo at the bar, Lambro 
frowning on the siesta of his daughter and Juan, Cain present- 
ing his unacceptable offering — are essentially the same. The 
varieties are varieties merely of age, situation, and outward 
show. If ever Lord Byron attempted to exhibit men of a dif- 
ferent kind, he always made them either insipid or unnatural. 
Selim is nothing. Bonnivart is nothing. Don Juan, in the 
first and best cantos, is a feeble copy of the Page in the 
Marriage of Figaro. Johnson, the man whom Juan meets in 
the slave-market, is a most striking failure. How differently 
would Sir Walter Scott have drawn a bluff, fearless English- 
man in such a situation ! The portrait would have seemed to 
walk out of the canvas. 

Sardanapalus is more closely drawn than any dramatic per- 
sonage that we can remember. His heroism and his effem- 
inacy, his contempt of death and his dread of a weighty helmet, 
his kingly resolution to be seen in the foremost ranks, and 
the anxiety with which he calls for a looking-glass that he may 
be seen to advantage, are contrasted, it is true, with all the 
point of Juvenal. Indeed the hint of the character seems to 
have been taken from what Juvenal says of Otho : 

Speculum civilis sarcina belli. 
Nimirum summi duels est occidere Galbam, 
Et curare cutem summi constantia civis, 
Bedriaci in campo spolium affectare Palati, 
Et pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem. 

These are excellent lines in a satire. But it is not the 
business of the dramatist to exhibit characters in this sharp 
antithetical way. It is not thus that Shakspeare makes Prince 
Hal rise from the rake of Eastcheap into the hero of Shrews- 
bury, and sink again into the rake of Eastcheap. It is not 
thus that Shakspeare has exhibited the union of effeminacy and 
valour in Antony. A dramatist cannot commit a greater error 
than that of following those pointed descriptions of character 



84 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

in which satirists and historians indulge so much. It is by 
rejecting what is natural that satirists and historians produce 
these striking characters. Their great object generally is to 
ascribe to every man as many contradictory qualities as pos- 
sible : and this is an object easily attained. By judicious selec- 
tion and judicious exaggeration, the intellect and the disposi- 
tion of any human being might be described as being made 
up of nothing but startling contrasts. If the dramatist attempts 
to create a being answering to one of these descriptions, he 
fails, because he reverses an imperfect analytical process. He 
produces, not a man, but a personified epigram. Very eminent 
writers have fallen into this snare. Ben Jonson has given us 
a Hermogenes, taken from the lively lines of Horace ; but the 
inconsistency which is so amusing in the satire appears un- 
natural and disgusts us in the play. Sir Walter Scott has com- 
mitted a far more glaring error of the same kind in the novel 
of Pcveril. Admiring, as every judicious reader must admire, 
the keen and vigorous lines in which Dryden satirized the 
Duke of Buckingham, Sir Walter attempted to make a Duke 
of Buckingham to suit them, a real living Zimri ; and he made, 
not a man, but the most grotesque of all monsters. A writer 
who should attempt to introduce into a play or a novel such a 
Wharton as the Wharton of Pope, or a Lord Hervey answer- 
ing to Sporus, would fail in the same manner. 

But to return to Lord Byron ; his women, like his men, are 
all of one breed. Haidee is a half-savage and girlish Julia ; 
Julia is a civilised and matronly Haidee. Leila is a wedded 
Zuleika, Zuleika a virgin Leila. Gulnare and Medora appear 
to have been intentionally opposed to each other ; yet the 
difference is a difference of situation only. A slight change of 
circumstances would, it should seem, have sent Gulnare to the 
lute of Medora, and armed Medora with the dagger of Gulnare. 

It is hardly too much to say, that Lord Byron could exhibit 
only one man and only one woman — a man, proud, moody, 
cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, 
a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of 



BYRON 85 

deep and strong affection ; a woman all softness and gentle- 
ness, loving to caress and to be caressed, but capable of being 
transformed by passion into a tigress. 

Even these two characters, his only two characters, he could 
not exhibit dramatically. He exhibited them in the manner, 
not of Shakspeare, but of Clarendon. He analysed them ; he 
made them analyse themselves ; but he did not make them 
show themselves. We are told, for example, in many lines of 
great force and spirit, that the speech of Lara was bitterly 
sarcastic, that he talked little of his travels, that if he was much 
questioned about them, his answers became short, and his brow 
gloomy. But we have none of Lara's sarcastic speeches or 
short answers. It is not thus that the great masters of human 
nature have portrayed human beings. Homer never tells us 
that Nestor loved to relate long stories about his youth. Shak- 
speare never tells us that in the mind of lago everything that is 
beautiful and endearing was associated with some filthy and 
debasing idea. 

It is curious to observe the tendency which the dialogue of 
Lord Byron always has to lose its character of a dialogue, and 
to become soliloquy. The scenes between Manfred and the 
Chamois-hunter, between Manfred and the Witch of the Alps, 
between Manfred and the Abbot, are instances of this tendency. 
Manfred, after a few unimportant speeches, has all the talk to 
himself. The other interlocutors are nothing more than good 
listeners. They drop an occasional question or ejaculation 
which sets Manfred off again on the inexhaustible topic of his 
personal feelings. If we examine the fine passages in Lord 
Byron's dramas — the description of Rome, for example, in 
Manfred, the description of a Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, 
the concluding invective which the old doge pronounces against 
Venice — we shall find that there is nothing dramatic in these 
speeches, that they derive none of their effect from the character 
or situation of the speaker, and that they would have been as 
fine, or finer, if they had been published as fragments of blank 
verse by Lord B)Ton. There is scarcely a speech in Shakspeare 



86 SELECTIONS FROM MyVCAULAY 

of which the same could be said. No skilful reader of the 
plays of Shakspeare can endure to see what are called the fine 
things taken out, under (he name of " Beauties " or of "" I'^legant 
Extracts," or to hear any single passage — "To be or not to be," 
for example — quoted as a sample of the great poet. "To be 
or not to be" has merit, undoubtedly, as a composition. It would 
have merit if put into the mouth of a chorus. But its merit 
as a composition vanishes when compared with its merit as 
belonging to Hamlet. Il is not too nuieh to say that the great 
plays of Shakspeare would lose less by being deprived of all the 
passages which are commonly called the fine passages, than those 
passages lose by being read separately from the play. This is 
perhaps the highest jiraise which can be given to a dramatist. 

On the other hand, it may be doubted whether there is, in 
all Lord Hyron's jilays, a single remarkable passage which 
owes any portion of its interest or effect to its connection 
with the characters or the action, lie has written only one 
scene, as far as we can recollect, which is dramatic even in 
manner — ^the scene between Lucifer and Cain. The conference 
is animated, and each of the interlocutors has a fair share of 
it. But this scene, when examined, will be found to be a 
confirmation of our remarks. It is a dialogue only in form. It 
is a soliloquy in essence. It is in reality a debate carried on 
within one single unquiet and sceptical mind. The questions 
and the answers, the objections and the solutions, all belong 
to the same charactev. 

A writer who showed so little dramatic skill in works profes- 
sedly dramatic was not likely to write narrative with dramatic 
effect. Nothing could, indeed, be more rude and careless than 
the structure of his narrative poems. He seems to have thought, 
with the hero of the Rchcafsaly that the plot was good for 
nothing but to bring in fine things. His two longest works, 
CJiildc Harold and Don Juan, have no plan whatever. Either of 
them might have been extended to any length, or cut short at 
any point. The state in which the Giaour appears illustrates the 
manner in which all Byron's poems were constructed. They are 



BYRON 87 

all, like the Giaour, collections of fragments ; and, though there 
may be no empty spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to 
perceive, by the clumsiness of the joining, where the parts for 
the sake of which the whole was composed end and begin. 

It was in description and meditation that Byron excelled. 
""Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte," His 
manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled — rapid, 
sketchy, full of vigour ; the selection happy ; the strokes few 
and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the 
genius of Mr. Wordsworth, we cannot but think that the 
minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effect. 
He has accustomed himself to gaze on nature with the eye of 
a lover, to dwell on every feature, and to mark every change 
of aspect. Those beauties which strike the most negligent ob- 
server, and those which only a close attention discovers, are 
equally familiar to him, and are equally prominent in his poetry. 
The proverb of old Hesiod, that half is often more than the 
whole, is eminently applicable to description. The policy of 
the Dutch, who cut down most of the precious trees in the 
Spice Islands in order to raise the value of what remained, was 
a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It was a policy 
which no poet understood better than Lord Byron. Whatever 
his faults might be, he was never, while his mind retained its 
vigour, accused of prolixity. 

His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, derived 
their principal interest from the feeling which always mingled 
with them. He was himself the beginning, the middle, and 
the end of all his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief 
object in every landscape, Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a 
crowd of other characters, were universally considered merely 
as loose incognitos of Byron ; and there is every reason to 
believe that he meant them to be so considered. The wonders 
of the outer world — the Tagus, with the mighty fleets of Eng- 
land riding on its bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging the 
shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, the glaring marble of 
Tentelicus, the banks of the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the 



88 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

sweet Lake of Leman, the dell of Egeria with its summer-birds 
and rustling lizards, the shapeless ruins of Rome overgrown 
with ivy and wall-flowers, the stars, the sea, the mountains — 
all were mere accessories, the background to one dark and 
melancholy figure. 

Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole 
eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah 
was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could 
exhaust its perennial waters of bitterness. Never was there 
such variety in monotony as that of Byron. From maniac 
laughter to piercing lamentation, there was not a single note of 
human anguish of which he was not master. Year after year, 
and month after month, he continued to repeat that to be 
wretched is the destiny of all ; that to be eminently wretched 
is the destiny of the eminent ; that all the desires by which we 
are cursed lead alike to misery — if they are not gratified, to 
the misery of disappointment; if they are gratified, to the 
misery of satiety. His heroes are men who have arrived by 
different roads at the same goal of despair, who are sick of life, 
who are at war with society, who are supported in their anguish 
only by an unconquerable pride resembling that of Prometheus 
on the rock or of Satan in the burning marl, who can master 
their agonies by the force of their will, and who to the last defy 
the whole power of earth and heaven. He always described him- 
self as a man of the same kind with his favourite creations ; as 
a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity for happi- 
ness was gone and could not be restored, but whose invincible 
spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or hereafter. 

How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an original 
disease of the mind, how much from real misfortune, how 
much from the nervousness of dissipation, how much was 
fanciful, how much was merely affected, it is impossible for 
us, and would probably have been impossible for the most 
intimate friends of Lord Byron, to decide. Whether there 
ever existed, or can ever exist, a person answering to the 
description which he gave of himself may be doubted ; but 



BYRON 89 

that he was not such a person is beyond all doubt. It is 
ridiculous to imagine that a man whose mind was really 
imbued with scorn of his fellow-creatures would have published 
three or four books every year in order to tell them so ; or 
that a man who could say with truth that he neither sought 
sympathy nor needed it would have admitted all Europe to 
hear his farewell to his wife, and his blessings on his child. 
In the second canto of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is 
insensible to fame and obloquy : 

111 may such contest now the spirit move, 
Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise. 

Yet we know on the best evidence that, a day or two before 
he published these lines, he was greatly, indeed childishly, 
elated by the compliments paid to his maiden speech in the 
House of Lords. 

We are far, however, from thinking that his sadness was 
altogether feigned. He was naturally a man of great sensi- 
bility ; he had been ill educated ; his feelings had been early 
exposed to sharp trials ; he had been crossed in his boyish 
love ; he had been mortified by the failure of his first literary 
efforts ; he was straitened in pecuniary circumstances ; he was 
unfortunate in his domestic relations ; the public treated him 
with cruel injustice ; his health and spirits suffered from his 
dissipated habits of life ; he was, on the whole, an unhappy 
man. He early discovered that by parading his unhappiness 
before the multitude he produced an immense sensation. 
The world gave him every encouragement to talk about his 
mental sufferings. The interest which his first confessions 
excited induced him to affect much that he did not feel ; and 
the affectation probably reacted on his feelings. How far the 
character in which he exhibited himself was genuine, and how 
far theatrical, it would probably have puzzled himself to say. 

There can be no doubt that this remarkable man owed the 
vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at 
least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of 



go SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

his poetry. We never could very clearly understand how it is 
that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popu- 
lar in writing ; or how it is that men who affect in their com- 
positions qualities and feelings which they have not, impose 
so much more easily on their contemporaries than on posterity. 
The interest which the loves of Petrarch excited in his own 
time, and the pitying fondness with which half Europe looked 
upon Rousseau, are well known. To readers of our age, the 
love of Petrarch, seems to have been love of that kind which 
breaks no hearts; and the sufferings of Rousseau to have 
deserved laughter rather than pity, to have been partly coun- 
terfeited, and partly the consequences of his own perverseness 
and vanity. 

What our grandchilden may think of the character of 
Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pretend to 
guess. It is certain that the interest which he excited during 
his life is without a parallel in literary history. The feeling 
with which young readers of poetry regarded him can be con- 
ceived only by those who have experienced it. To people who 
are unacquainted with real calamity, "nothing is so dainty 
sweet as lovely melancholy." This faint image of sorrow has 
in all ages been considered by young gentlemen as an agree- 
able excitement. Old gentlemen and middle-aged gentlemen 
have so many real causes of sadness that they are rarely in- 
clined "to be as sad as night only for wantonness." Indeed 
they want the power almost as much as the inclination. We 
know very few persons engaged in active life who, even if 
they were to procure stools to be melancholy upon, and were 
to sit down with all the premeditation of Master Stephen, 
would be able to enjoy much of what somebody calls the 
" ecstasy of woe." 

Among that large class of young persons whose reading is 
almost entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity 
of Lord Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him ; 
they treasured up the smallest relics of him ; they learned his 
poems by heart, and did their best to write like him, and to 



BYRON 91 

look like him. Many of them practised at the glass in the 
hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of 
the brow, which appear in some of his portraits. A few dis- 
carded their neck-cloths in imitation of their great leader. 
For some years the Minerva press sent forth no novel without 
a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The number of hope- 
ful undergraduates and medical students who became things 
of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased 
to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves to 
dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all 
calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the 
minds of many of these enthusiasts a pernicious and absurd 
association between intellectual power and moral depravity. 
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, 
compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system 
in which the two great commandments were, to hate your 
neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife. 

This affectation has passed away ; and a few more years 
will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency 
which once belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is still 
a man, young, noble, and unhappy. To our children he will 
be merely a writer ; and their impartial judgment will appoint 
his place among writers, without regard to his rank or to his 
private history. That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting, 
that much of what has been admired by his contemporaries will 
be rejected as worthless, we have little doubt ; but we have 
as little doubt that, after the closest scrutiny, there will still 
remain much that can only perish with the English language. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The Life of JoJinsoii is assuredly a great, a very great work. 
Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shak- 
speare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthe- 
nes is not more, decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is 
the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced 
all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to 
place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. 

We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the 
human intellect so strange a phasnomenon as this book. Many 
of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. 
Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he 
has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to 
his own account or to the united testimony of all who knew 
him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson 
described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of 
immortality by not having been alive when the Dtinciad was 
written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression 
for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that 
brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its 
fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of some em- 
inent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. 
He was always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then 
" binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, 
but literally. He exhibited himself at the Shakspeare Jubilee, 
to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard 
round his hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In 
his Toiir, he proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he 
was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and 
impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot ; bloated 
with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of 

92 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 93 

a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eaves- 
dropper, a common butt in the taverns of London ; so curious 
to know everybody who was talked about, that, Tory and High 
Churchman as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for 
an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish 
distinctions, that when he had been to Court, he drove to the 
office where his book was printing without changing his clothes, 
and summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles 
and sword ; such was this man, and such he was content and 
proud to be. Everything which another man would have 
hidden, everything the publication of which would have made 
another man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous 
exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things 
he said, what bitter retorts he provoked ; how at one place he 
was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing ; 
how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read 
the prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him ; 
how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin; how 
he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his 
babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face ; how 
he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors 
quieted him as they would have quieted a child ; how tipsy he 
was at Lady Cork's one evening, and how much his merriment 
annoyed the ladies; how impertinent he was to the Duchess of 
Argyll, and with what stately contempt she put down his im- 
pertinence ; how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his 
impudent obtrusiveness ; how his father and the very wife of 
his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries; all these things 
he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects 
for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his 
temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac 
whimsies, all his castles in the air, he displayed with a cool 
self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was mak- 
ing a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel 
in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people 
ill ; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as himself. 



94 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

That such a man should have written one of the best books 
in the world is strange enough. But this is not all. Many 
persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, 
and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of 
mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly 
described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, 
and by another as a being 

Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll. 

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders 
would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But 
these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weak- 
nesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If 
he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great 
writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and 
the torment of those among whom he lived, without the offi- 
ciousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, 
the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced 
so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude ; a 
Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were 
virtues ; an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the 
most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence ; a 
man without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to 
know when he was hurting the feelings of others or when he 
was exposing himself to derision ; and because he was all this, 
he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably 
surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his 
own idol Johnson. 

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as 
writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his 
books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, reli- 
gion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. 
His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, 
and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. 
To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay 
them an extravagant compliment. They have no pretence to 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 95 

argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable 
observations made by himself in the course of conversation. 
Of those observations we do not remember one which is above 
the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed 
many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always 
ranting or twaddhng. Logic, ' eloquence, wit, taste, all those 
things which are generally considered as making a book valu- 
able, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick 
observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had 
been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves 
have sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because he was a 
dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. 
Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly, are 
most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them as 
illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves, 
they are good dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shal- 
low, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced con- 
sonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the most 
candid. Other men who have pretended to lay open their own 
hearts — Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron — have evi- 
dently written with a constant view to effect, and are to be then 
most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. There is 
scarcely any man who would not rather accuse himself of great 
crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions than proclaim 
all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to 
find a person who would avow actions like those of Caesar 
Borgia or Danton, than one who would publish a day-dream 
like those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. Those weaknesses 
which most men keep covered up in the most secret places of 
the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of 
love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded 
before all the world. He was perfectly frank, because the 
weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his spirits 
prevented him from knowing when he made himself ridiculous. 
His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of 
the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 



96 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

His fame is great, and it will, we have no doubt, be lasting; 
but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed marvellously 
resembles infamy. We remember no other case in which the 
world has made so great a distinction between a book and its 
author. In general, the book and the author are considered 
as one. To admire the book is to admire the author. The 
case of Boswell is an exception, we think the only exception, 
to this rule. His work is universally allowed to be interesting, 
instructive, eminently original ; yet it has brought him nothing 
but contempt. All the world reads it ; all the world delights 
in it ; yet we do not remember ever to have read or ever to 
have heard any expression of respect and admiration for the 
man to whom we owe so much instruction and amusement. 
While edition after edition of his book was coming forth, his 
son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and hated to 
hear it mentioned. This feeling was natural and reasonable. 
Sir Alexander saw that in proportion to the celebrity of the 
work was the degradation of the author. The very editors of 
this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten their alle- 
giance, and, like those Puritan casuists who took arms by the 
authority of the king against his person, have attacked the 
writer while doing homage to the writings. Mr, Croker, for 
example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on 
the life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biog- 
rapher whose performance he has taken such pains to illustrate, 
without some expression of contempt. 

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the 
malignity of the most malignant satirist could scarcely cut 
deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. Having himself no 
sensibility to derision and contempt, he took it for granted 
that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to 
exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a com- 
mon tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of pov- 
erty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pertness and 
folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought 
upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 97 

in cases in which the feehngs or the honour of others might 
be concerned. No man, surely, ever pubhshed such stories 
respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere. He 
would infallibly have made his hero as contemptible as he has 
made himself, had not his hero really possessed some moral 
and intellectual qualities of a very high order. The best proof 
that Johnson was really an extraordinary man is that his 
character, instead of being degraded, has, on the whole, been 
decidedly raised by a work in which all his vices and weak- 
nesses are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were 
exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 

Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame and 
in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to 
us than any other man in history. Everything about him — his 
coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus 's 
dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs 
which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his 
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his 
inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts 
as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps 
of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputa- 
tions, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puff- 
ings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic 
wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, 
his queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, 
the cat Hodge and the negro Frank — all are as familiar to us 
as the objects by which we have been surrounded from child- 
hood. But we have no minute information respecting those 
years of Johnson's life during which his character and his 
manners became immutably fixed. We know him, not as he 
was known to the men of his own generation, but as he was 
known to men whose father he might have been. That cele- 
brated club of which he was the most distinguished member 
contained few persons who could remember a time when his 
fame was not fully established and his habits completely 
formed. He had made himself a name in literature while 



98 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. He was about 
twenty years older than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Ham- 
ilton ; about thirty years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and 
Langton ; and about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir 
William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the 
two writers from whom we derive most of our knowledge 
respecting him, never saw him till long after he was fifty 
years old, till most of his great works had become classical, 
and till the pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed 
him above poverty. Of those eminent men who were his most 
intimate associates towards the close of his life, the only one, 
as far as we remember, who knew him during the first ten 
or twelve years of his residence in the capital, was David 
Garrick ; and it does not appear that, during those years, 
David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman. 

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when the 
condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. 
It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of 
patronage had passed away. The age of general curiosity and 
intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers is at 
present so great that a popular author may subsist in comfort 
and opulence on the profits of his works. In the reigns of 
William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even 
such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been 
able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. 
But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at 
the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encourage- 
ment, by a vast system of bounties and premiums. There was, 
perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit 
were so splendid, at which men who could write well found 
such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and 
to the highest honours of the State. The chiefs of both the 
great parties into which the kingdom was divided, patronized 
literature with emulous munificence. Congreve, when he had 
scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 99 

with places which made him independent for Hfe. Smith, 
tliough his Hippolytns and PJiadi-a failed, would have been 
consoled with three hundred a year but for his own folly. 
Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also land-surveyor of 
the customs in the port of London, clerk of the council to 
the Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to the 
Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary to the Commissions 
of the Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Prerogative 
Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and 
of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. 
Stepney and Prior were employed in embassies of high dignity 
and importance. Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a 
silk mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and-twenty. 
It was to a poem on the death of Charles the Second, and 
to the City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed his 
introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his 
Auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, but for the uncon- 
querable prejudice of the queen, would have been a bishop. 
Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the 
crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious 
writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner of 
stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur Mainwaring 
was a commissioner of the customs, and auditor of the im- 
prest. Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. 
Addison was Secretary of State. 

This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as it seems, 
by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only noble versifier in 
the Court of Charles the Second who possessed talents for 
composition which were independent of the aid of a coronet. 
Montague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, and imi- 
tated through the whole course of his life the liberality to 
which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory leaders, 
Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of 
the Whig party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But 
soon after the accession of the House of Hanover a change 
took place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared 



lOO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

little for poetry or eloquence. The importance of the House 
of Commons was constantly on the increase. The Govern- 
ment was under the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary 
support much of that patronage which had been employed in 
fostering literary merit ; and Walpole was by no means in- 
clined to divert any part of the fund of corruption to pur- 
poses which he considered as idle. He had eminent talents 
for government and for debate. But he had paid little attention 
to books, and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse 
jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, was far 
more pleasing to him than Thomson's Scasojis or Richard- 
son's Pamela. He had observed that some of the distin- 
guished writers whom the favour of Halifax had turned into 
statesmen had been mere incumbrances to their party, dawdlers 
in office and mutes in Parliament. During the whole course 
of his administration, therefore, he scarcely befriended a single 
man of genius. The best writers of the age gave all their sup- 
port to the Opposition, and contributed to excite that discon- 
tent which, after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust 
war, overthrew the Minister to make room for men less able 
and equally immoral. The Opposition could reward its eulo- 
gists with little more than promises and caresses. St. James's 
would give nothing : Leicester House had nothing to give. 

Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his literary 
career, a writer had little to hope from the patronage of pow- 
erful individuals. The patronage of the public did not yet 
furnish the means of comfortable subsistence. The prices 
paid by booksellers to authors were so low that a man of con- 
siderable talents and unremitting industry could do little more 
than provide for the day which was passing over him. The 
lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The thin and withered 
ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvest 
was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is 
squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word 
Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, 
familiar with compters and spunging-houses, and perfectly 



SAMUEL JOHNSON lOl 

qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common 
Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the 
Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well might pity 
him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings 
were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. 
To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar 
among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for 
the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one 
haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub Street 
to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the 
alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk in June 
and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in 
an hospital, and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of 
more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, 
would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the 
Scriblerus Club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have 
been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he 
had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely 
less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster I-^ow. 

As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of 
life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, assur- 
edly, has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, mor- 
bid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the 
faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is 
precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of 
severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beg- 
gar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the 
wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous 
than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a 
manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months 
of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received 
dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet 
with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the 
images of which his mind had been haunted while he was 
sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish 
ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him 



I02 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, 
of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in 
gold-laced hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed be- 
cause their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats 
because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes drinking cham- 
pagne and Tokay with Betty Careless ; sometimes standing at 
the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up 
the scent of what they could not afford to taste ; they knew 
luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never knaw comfort. 
These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and 
frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a 
Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the re- 
straints and securities of civilized communities. They were as 
untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the 
wild ass. They could no more be broken in to the offices of 
social man than the unicorn could be trained to serve and 
abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of 
a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered to their 
necessities. To assist them was impossible ; and the most 
benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving re- 
lief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon 
as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the 
wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might have 
supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in strange 
freaks of sensuality, and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, 
the poet was again pestering all his acquamtance for twopence 
to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cookshop. If 
his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses 
were forthwith turned into bagnios and taverns. All order was 
destroyed ; all business was suspended. The most good-natured 
host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius 
in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh punch 
at five o'clock in the morning. 

A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had been 
raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in his 
youth, both the great political parties had extended to his 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 103 

Homer. Young had received the only pension ever bestowed, 
to the best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the 
reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets 
who attached themselves to the Opposition, Thomson in par- 
ticular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe suffering, the 
means of subsistence from their political friends. Richardson, 
like a man of sense, kept his shop, and his shop kept him, 
which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have 
done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state 
even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for sub- 
sistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and 
Thomson were certainly four of the most distinguished per- 
sons that England produced during the eighteenth century : 
it is well known that they were all four arrested for debt. 

Into calamities and difficulties such as these Johnson plunged 
in his twenty-eighth year. From that time till he was three or 
four and fifty, we have little information respecting him ; little, 
we mean, compared with the full and accurate information 
which we possess respecting his proceedings and habits towards 
the close of his life. He emerged at length from cock- 
lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the polished 
and the opulent. His fame was established. A pension suffi- 
cient for his wants had been conferred on him ; and he came 
forth to astonish a generation with which he had almost as 
little in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. 

In his early years he had occasionally seen the great ; but 
he had seen them as a beggar. He now came among them as 
a companion. The demand for amusement and instruction 
had, during the course of twenty years, been gradually increas- 
ing. The price of literary labour had risen ; and those rising 
men of letters with whom Johnson was henceforth to associate 
were for the most part persons widely different from those who 
had walked about with him all night in the streets for want of a 
lodging. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, 
Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and 
Churchill were the most distinguished writers of what may be 



I04 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

called the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these 
men Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace the 
stronger lineaments of that character which, when Johnson 
first came up to London, was common among authors. Of 
the rest, scarcely any had felt the pressure of severe poverty. 
Almost all had been early admitted into the most respectable 
society on an equal footing. They were men of quite a differ- 
ent species from the dependants of Curll and Osborne. 

Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past 
age, the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks ; 
the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and 
whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaustible matter 
to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had received 
an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irritable 
temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his man- 
hood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even 
to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civ- 
ilized beings who were the companions of his old age. The 
perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his per- 
son, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals 
of sluggishness, his strange abstinence and his equally strange 
voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant 
rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, 
made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during 
the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An orig- 
inal he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed 
full information concerning those who shared his early hard- 
ships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities 
of manner were, for the most part, failings which he had in 
common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at 
Streatham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen 
at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged 
clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, 
during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt 
whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of 
his early life had accustomed him to bear privation with 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 105 

fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could 
fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a fam- 
ished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the per- 
spiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine; 
but when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large 
tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that 
same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in 
his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence 
which he showed in society were to be expected from a man 
whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the 
bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, 
by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of booksellers, 
by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of patrons, by that 
bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which 
are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which 
makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, 
coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence 
and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, 
he should be " eo immitior, quia toleraverat, " that, though his 
heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour in 
society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he 
had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief ; 
but for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a deli- 
cate mind he had no pity ; for it was a kind of suffering which 
he could scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his 
shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He turned 
his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old 
creatures who could find no other asylum ; nor could all their 
peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the 
pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous ; and he 
scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded 
affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that 
he was not affected by paltry vexations ; and he seemed to 
think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to those 
vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for com- 
plaining of a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about 



I06 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, 
in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people ought to 
be asTiamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. 
Goldsmith crying because TJic Good-natiircd Man had failed, 
inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not 
good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary 
losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, 
moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened 
by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events ; but all that 
could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was 
not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock 
dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such grief he 
considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the wealthy. 
A washer-woman, left a widow with nine small children, would 
not have sobbed herself to death. 

A person who troubled himself so little about small or senti- 
mental grievances was not likely to be very attentive to the 
feelings of others in the ordinary intercourse of society. He 
could not understand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could 
make any man really unhappy. " My dear doctor," said he to 
Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call him 
Holofernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, 
"who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably? " Polite- 
ness has been well defined as benevolence in small things. 
Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence, 
but because small things appeared smaller to him than to 
people who had never known what it was to live for fourpence 
halfpenny a day. 

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of 
great powers with low prejudices. If we judged of him by the 
best parts of his mind, we should place him almost as high as 
he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst parts 
of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell himself. 
Where he was not under the influence of some strange scruple 
or some domineering passion, which prevented him from boldly 
and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 107 

reasoner, a little too much inclined to scepticism, and a little 
too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be imposed 
upon by fallacies in argument or by exaggerated statements of 
fact. But if, while he was beating down sophisms and expos- 
ing false testimony, some childish prejudices, such as would 
excite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across him, he 
was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away 
under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. 
Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and its force 
were now as much astonished at its strange narrowness and 
feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian tale, when he saw 
the Genie, whose stature had overshadowed the whole sea- 
coast, and whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, 
contract himself to the dimensions of his small prison, and lie 
there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon. 

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme severity 
the evidence for all stories which were merely odd. But when 
they were not only odd but miraculous, his severity relaxed. 
He began to be credulous precisely at the point where the 
most credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious to 
observe, both in his writings and in his conversation, the con- 
trast between the disdainful manner in which he rejects unau- 
thenticated anecdotes, even when they are consistent with the 
general laws of nature, and the respectful manner in which 
he mentions the wildest stories relating to the invisible world. 
A man who told him of a water-spout or a meteoric stone 
generally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A man 
who told him of a prediction or a dream wonderfully accom- 
plished was sure of a courteous hearing. "Johnson," observed 
Hogarth, " like King David, says in his haste that all men 
are liars." "His incredulity," says Mrs. Thrale, "amounted 
almost to disease." She tells us how he browbeat a gentle- 
man who gave him an account of a hurricane in the West 
Indies, and a poor Quaker who related some strange circum- 
stance about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. 
" It is not so. It cannot be true. Don't tell that story again. 



io8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

You cannot think how poor a figure you make in telUng it." 
He once said, half jestingly, we suppose, that for six months 
he refused to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and 
that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be greatly 
exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave face how old 
Mr, Cave of St. John's Gate saw a ghost, and how this ghost 
was something of a shadowy being. He went himself on a 
ghost-hunt to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley 
for not following up another scent of the same kind with 
proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects the Celtic geneal- 
ogies and poems without the least hesitation ; yet he declares 
himself willing to believe the stories of the second-sight. If 
he had examined the claims of the Highland seers with half 
the severity with which he sifted the evidence for the genu- 
ineness of Fiiigal, he would, we suspect, have come away 
from Scotland with a mind fully made up. In his Lives of the 
Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit to the 
accounts of Lord Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies; 
but he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance about 
some intelligence preternaturally impressed on the mind of 
that nobleman. He avows himself to be in great doubt about 
the truth of the story, and ends by warning his readers not 
wholly to slight such impressions. 

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are worthy of 
a liberal and enlarged mind. He could discern clearly enough 
the folly and meanness of all bigotry except his own. When 
he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a 
person who had really obtained an insight into the divine 
philosophy of the New Testament, and who considered Chris- 
tianity as a noble scheme of government, tending to promote 
the happiness and to elevate the moral nature of man. The 
horror which the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum- 
porridge, mince-pies, and dancing bears, excited his contempt. 
To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against 
showy dress he replied with admirable sense and spirit, " Let 
us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 109 

off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls 
and tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a 
green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey 
one," Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as 
unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his 
zeal for ceremonies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths 
altogether inconsistent with reason or with Christian charity. 
He has gravely noted down in his diary that he once com- 
mitted the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scot- 
land, he thought it his duty to pass several months without 
joining in public worship, solely because the ministers of the 
Kirk had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of estimat- 
ing the piety of his neighbours was somewhat singular. 
"Campbell," said he, "is a good man, a pious man. I am 
afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many 
years ; but he never passes a church without pulling off his 
hat : this shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily 
must surely contain many pious robbers and well-principled 
assassins. Johnson could easily see that a Roundhead who 
named all his children after Solomon's singers, and talked in 
the House of Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an 
unprincipled villain whose religious mummeries only aggra- 
vated his guilt. But a man who took off his hat when he 
passed a church episcopally consecrated must be a good man, 
a pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily 
see that those persons who looked on a dance or a laced 
waistcoat as sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of 
God and of the ends of revelation. But with what a storm 
of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had 
blamed him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with 
sugarless tea and butterless buns ! 

Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant of patri- 
otism. Nobody saw more clearly the error of those who 
regarded liberty, not as a means, but as an end, and who 
proposed to themselves, as the object of their pursuit, the 
prosperity of the State as distinct from the prosperity of 



no SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the individuals who compose the State. His calm and settled 
opinion seems to have been that forms of government have 
little or no influence on the happiness of society. This opinion, 
erroneous as it is, ought at least to have preserved him from 
all intemperance on political questions. It did not, however, 
preserve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd ex- 
travagances of party spirit, from rants which, in everything but 
the diction, resembled those of Squire Western, He was, as 
a politician, half ice and half fire. On the side of his intellect 
he was a mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public 
affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tendency of any 
form of polity. His passions, on the contrary, were vjolent even 
to slaying against all who leaned to Whiggish principles. The 
well-known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller 
express what seems to have been his deliberate judgment : 

How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure ! 

He had previously put expressions very similar into the mouth 
of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast these passages with the 
torrents of raving abuse which he poured forth against the 
Long Parliament and the American Congress. In one of 
the conversations reported by Boswell this inconsistency dis- 
plays itself in the most ludicrous manner. 

"Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested that 
luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit of liberty. 
Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary. I would not give half a 
guinea to live under one form of government rather than an- 
other. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. 
Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private 
man. What Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he 
pleases ? ' Sir Adam : * But, sir, in the British constitution it 
is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as 
to preserve a balance against the Crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I per- 
ceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of 
the power of the Crown .? The Crown has not power enough.' " 



SAMUEL JOHNSON iii 

One of the old philosophers, Lord Bacon tells us, used to 
say that life and death were just the same to him. " Why, 
then," said an objector, "do you not kill yourself?" The 
philosopher answered, " Because it is just the same." If the 
difference between two forms of government be not worth 
half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be 
viler than Toryism, or how the Crown can have too little 
power. If the happiness of individuals is not affected by 
political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But 
zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person could have 
been more quick-sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction 
as this in the logic of an antagonist. 

The judgments which Johnson passed on books were, in his 
own time, regarded with superstitious veneration, and, in our 
time, are generally treated with indiscriminate contempt. They 
are the judgments of a strong but enslaved understanding. 
The mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninterrupted 
fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within his narrow 
limits, he displayed a vigour and an activity which ought to 
have enabled him to clear the barrier that confined him. 

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises 
so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the 
great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency 
may be observed in the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. Those 
writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing 
on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at 
a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. 
Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are 
rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the 
obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the same with 
some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual 
prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most 
refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science 
being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being 
once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must 
be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question 



112 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if 
they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of 
that system which they have passed their lives in studying, 
these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. 
Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own 
court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes 
and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of 
precedents which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely 
know him again when, a few hours later, they hear him speak- 
ing on the other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity 
of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry 
quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, 
and which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, 
can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which 
had excited their admiration under the same roof, and on the 
same day. 

Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like 
a legislator. He never examined foundations where a point 
was already ruled. His whole code of criticism rested on pure 
assumption, for which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an 
authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn 
from the nature of things. He took it for granted that the 
kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had 
been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and 
which he had himself written with success, was the best kind 
of poetry. In his biographical work he has repeatedly laid it 
down as an undeniable proposition that during the latter part 
of the seventeenth century, and the earlier part of the eighteenth, 
English poetry had been in a constant progress of improve- 
ment. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope had been, according 
to him, the great reformers. He judged of all works of the 
imagination by the standard established among his own con- 
temporaries. Though he allowed Homer to have been a 
greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the Aincid 
a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed, he well might have 
thought so, for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He 
pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fairfax's 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 113 

would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine 
old English ballads, and always spoke with the most provoking 
contempt of Percy's fondness for them. Of the great original 
works of imagination which appeared during his time, Richard- 
son's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little 
or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver s Travels, or in Tristram 
Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence he vouchsafed only 
a line of cold commendation — of commendation much colder 
than what he has bestowed on the Creation of that portentous 
bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren 
rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he 
felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just ; but it was, 
we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the 
very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He 
despised it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but 
because it had a superficial air of originality. 

He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositions 
fashioned on his own principles ; but when a deeper philosophy 
was required, when he undertook to pronounce judgment on 
the works of those great minds which "yield homage only to 
eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criticized 
Pope's Epitaphs excellently ; but his observations on Shak- 
speare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us for the most 
part as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, 
whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. 

Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can be com- 
pared only to that strange nervous feeling which made him 
uneasy if he had not touched every post between the Mitre 
tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs 
to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he 
said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not 
pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English 
epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating 
a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the 
Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for 
commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine. 



114 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

On men and manners, at least on the men and manners of a 
particular place and a particular age, Johnson had certainly 
looked with a most observant and discriminating eye. His 
remarks on the education of children, on marriage, on the 
economy of families, on the rules of society, are always striking, 
and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the knowledge of 
life which he possessed in an eminent degree is very imper- 
fectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate chiefs of the Middle 
Ages who were suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of 
gold, his maxims perish under that load of words which was de- 
signed for their defence and their ornament. But it is clear from 
the remains of his conversation that he had more of that homely 
wisdom which nothing but experience and observation can give 
than any writer since the time of Swift. If he had been content 
to write as he talked, he might have left books on the practical 
art of living superior to the Directions to Scnuints. 

Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on litera- 
ture, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrowness as 
for strength. He was no master of the great science of human 
nature. He had studied, not the genus man, but the species 
Londoner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant with 
all the forms of life and all the shades of moral and intel- 
lectual character which were to be seen from Islington to the 
Thames, and from Hyde Park Corner to Mile-End Green. 
But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the 
rural life of England he knew nothing ; and he took it for 
granted that everybody who lived in the country was either 
stupid or miserable. " Country gentlemen," said he, ".must 
be unhappy ; for they have not enough to keep their lives in 
motion" ; as if all those peculiar habits and associations which 
made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the 
world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. 
Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and 
ignorant presumption. " The Athenians of the age of Demos- 
thenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a 
barbarous people," In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 1 5 

he used similar language. "The boasted Athenians," he said, 
" were barbarians. The mass of every people must be bar- 
barous where there is no printing." The fact was this : he saw 
that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and 
brutal fellow : he saw that great refinement of taste and activity 
of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read 
much ; and because it was by means of books that people 
acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which 
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest 
and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated 
by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess 
very few volumes ; and the largest library to which he had 
access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase 
in Bolt Court ; but the Athenian might pass every morning 
in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak 
four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Sophocles 
and Aristophanes ; he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias 
and the paintings of Zeuxis ; he knew by heart the choruses 
of ^schylus ; he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the 
streets reciting the Shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus ; 
he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, 
revenue, and war ; he was a soldier, trained under a liberal 
and generous discipline ; he was a judge compelled every day 
to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were 
in themselves an education — an education eminently fitted, not, 
indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quick- 
ness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the 
expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was over- 
looked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by 
reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a 
Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black 
Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish 
clerk or a printer's devil. 

Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to a ridiculous 
extreme his unjust contempt for foreigners. He pronounced 
the French to be a very silly people, much behind us, stupid, 



Ii6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

ignorant creatures. And this judgment he formed after having 
been at Paris about a month, during which he would not talk 
French, for fear of giving the natives an advantage over him 
in conversation. He pronounced them, also, to be an indelicate 
people, because a French footman touched the sugar with his 
fingers. That ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, 
has defended his countrymen very successfully against John- 
son's accusations, and has pointed out some English practices 
which, to an impartial spectator, would seem at least as incon- 
sistent with physical cleanliness and social decorum as those 
which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as Bos- 
well loves to call him, it never occurred to doubt that there 
must be something eternally and immutably good in the usages 
to which he had been accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks 
on society beyond the bills of mortality are generally of much 
the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, the English 
footman in Dr. Moore's Zchico. " Suppose the King of France 
has no sons, but only a daughter ; then, when the king dies, 
this here daughter, according to that there law, cannot be made 
queen, but the next near relative, provided he is a man, is 
made king, and not the last king's daughter, which, to be sure, 
is very unjust. The French footguards are dressed in blue, 
and all the marching regiments in white, w^hich has a very 
foolish appearance for soldiers ; and as for blue regimentals, 
it is only fit for the blue horse or the artillery." 

Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a state of 
society completely new to him ; and a salutary suspicion of 
his own deficiencies seems on that occasion to have crossed 
his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the last para- 
graph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national manners 
were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of one who 
had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, 
however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last 
he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and 
those studies which tend to emancipate the mind from the 
prejudices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 117 

foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and 
boisterous contempt of ignorance. " What does a man learn 
by travelling ? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling ? What 
did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there 
was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt ? " History was, 
in his opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an 
old almanack : historians could, as he conceived, claim no 
higher dignity than that of almanack-makers ; and his favourite 
historians were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no 
higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. 
Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of his 
friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and 
declared that he never desired to hear of the Punic war again 
as long as he lived. 

Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our own 
interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing than . 
another fact. The fact that there is a snake in a pyramid, or 
the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as 
unprofitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind in a 
particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the fact that a Mr. 
Smith comes into the city every morning on the top of one of 
the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those who will not 
crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. John- 
son, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel worthless, 
because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling 
to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times 
is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those 
can hardly escape whose whole communion is with one gener- 
ation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at conclusions by 
means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who there- 
fore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents 
with essential properties. In short, the real use of travelling 
and of studying history is to keep men from being what Tom 
Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in reality. 

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far 
greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation 



ii8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and 
far superior to them in manner. When lie talked, he clothed 
his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As 
soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public, 
his style became systematically vicious. All his books are 
written in a learned language — in a language which nobody 
hears from his mother or his nurse ; in a language in which 
nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love ; in a 
language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson 
himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The 
expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, ener- 
getic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did 
his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters 
from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that 
work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation ; 
and it is amusing to coitipare the two versions. " When we 
were taken up-stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty 
fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." 
This incident is recorded in the Joia-ney as follows : " Out of 
one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at 
our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." 
Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " The Rehearsal,'' he 
said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep it sweet " ; 
then, after a pause, " it has not vitality enough to preserve it 
from putrefaction." 

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, 
when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, 
for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of 
Milton or of Burke, But a mannerism which does not sit 
easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, 
and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always 
offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. 

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all 
our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is 
almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that 
he made less use than any other eminent writer of those 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 119 

strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which 
the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language ; and that 
he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own 
speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and 
Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully naturalized, 
must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with 
the king's English. His constant practice of padding out a 
sentence with useless epithets till it became as stiff as the 
bust of an exquisite ; his antithetical forms of expression, 
constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the 
ideas expressed ; his big words wasted on little things ; his harsh 
inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy 
inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the 
expression of our great old writers ; all these peculiarities have 
been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, 
till the public have become sick of the subject. 

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you 
were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would 
make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever 
had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he 
wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an 
empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he 
wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, 
like Sir Piercy Shaf ton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him 
under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely 
as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay 
Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her 
relations in such terms as these : "I was surprised, after the 
civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure 
and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well 
conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, 
and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was 
clouded and eveiy motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla 
informs us that she "had not passed the earlier part of life 
without the flattery of courtship and the joys of triumph ; but 
had danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy 



I20 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and the gratulations of applause ; had been attended from 
pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain ; 
and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of 
gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely 
Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a 
worse grace. The reader may well cry out with honest Sir 
Hugh Evans, " I like not when a 'oman has a great peard : I 
spy a great peard under her muffler." ^ 

We had something more to say ; but our article is already 
too long, and we must close it. We would fain part in good 
humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the 
editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this 
claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's 
book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and 
the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the 
lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which 
live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the 
spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, the 
courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, 
Gibbon tapping his snuffbox and Sir Joshua with his trumpet 
in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is 
as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have 
been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face, 
seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black 
worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the 
dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see 
the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches ; we see 
the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then comes the 
" Why, sir ! " and the " What then, sir ? " and the " No, sir ! " 
and the " You don't see your way through the question, sir ! " 

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable 
man ! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in 
ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries 

1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close resemblance 
to a passage in the Rambler (No. 20). The resemblance may possibly be 
the effect of unconscious plagiarism. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 21 

that full homage which men of genius have in general received 
only from posterity ! To be more intimately known to pos- 
terity than other men are known to their contemporaries 1 
That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, 
in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writ- 
ings which he probably expected to be immortal is every day 
fading ; while those peculiarities of manner and that careless 
table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would 
die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the 
English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe. 



JOHN BUNYAN 

The characteristic pecuharity of the Pilgrim s Progress is that 
it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human 
interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory 
of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with tears. There 
are some good allegories in Johnson's works, and some of still 
higher merit by Addison. In these performances there is, 
perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim s Progress. 
But the pleasure whi(?h is produced by the Vision of Mirza, the 
Vision of Theodore, the Genealogy of Wit, or the Contest between 
Rest and Labour, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we 
derive from one of Cowley's odes or from a canto of Hudibras. 
It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the understanding, and 
in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even 
Spenser himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that 
ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory 
interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his 
mind on the House of Pride and the House of Temperance. 
One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the 
whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of cardinal virtues 
and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and 
women. Of the persons who read the first canto, not one in 
ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred 
perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary 
are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If the 
last six books, which are said to have been destroyed in Ireland, 
had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than 
that of a commentator would have held out to the end. 

It is not so with the Pilgrini s Pivgrcss. That wonderful book, 
while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is 
loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Dr. Johnson, 



JOHN BUNYAN 123 

all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to 
read books through, made an exception in favour of the 
Pilgrim's Progress. That work was one of the two or three 
works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit 
that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the 
most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In 
the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrini s Progress is the delight 
of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrini s Progress is a 
greater favourite than Jack the Giant-killer. Eveiy reader 
knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road 
in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. 
This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not 
should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one 
mind should become the personal recollections of another. 
And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, 
no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are 
not perfectly acquainted. The wicket- gate, and the desolate 
swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction ; the 
long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it ; the Inter- 
preter's house and all its fair shows ; the prisoner in the iron 
cage ; the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, 
and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in 
gold ; the cross and the sepulchre ; the steep hill and the 
pleasant harbour, the stately front of the House Beautiful by the 
wayside ; the chained lions crouching in the porch ; the low green 
valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered with flocks — 
all are as well known to us as the sights of our own street. 
Then we come to the narrow place where Apollyon strode right 
across the whole breadth of the way to stop the journey of 
Christian, and where, afterwards, the pillar was set up to 
testify how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As 
we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade 
of the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The 
clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, 
and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the 
darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by 



124 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its 
noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes to terrify the adventurer. 
Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the 
mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch 
by his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes the 
dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones of those 
whom they had slain. 

Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till 
at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller ; 
and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of 
Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops 
and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French 
Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds 
of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of 
the earth. 

Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and 
through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant 
river which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On the left 
branches off the path leading to the horrible castle, the court- 
yard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims ; and right 
onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable 
Mountains. 

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the 
fogs and briars of the l^^nchanted Ground, with here and there 
a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour. And 
beyond is the. land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, 
and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines 
night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements 
and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold 
river over which there is no bridge. 

All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or 
overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones 
and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with 
her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the 
money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Worldly-Wise- 
man and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative and Mrs. Timorous, 



JOHN BUNYAN 125 

all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers 
through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that 
with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or 
Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost 
the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of 
the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors men 
are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, but 
jealousy ; not a traitor, but perfidy; not a patriot, but patriotism. 
The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that 
personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A di- 
alogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic 
effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays. 
In this respect the genius of Bunyan bore a great resemblance 
to that of a man who had very little else in common with him — 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. The strong imagination of Shelley made 
him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite 
terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he made a 
gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like 
forms. He turned atheism itself into a mythology, rich with 
visions as glorious as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias, 
or the virgin saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. 
The Spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of 
Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They 
took shape and colour. They were no longer mere words, but 
"intelligible forms"; "fair humanities"; objects of love, of 
adoration, or of fear. As there can be no stronger sign of a 
mind destitute of the poetical faculty than that tendency which 
was so common among the writers of the French school to turn 
images into abstractions — Venus for example, into Love, 
Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into 
P'estivity — so there can be no stronger sign of a mind truly 
poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting process, 
and to make individuals out of generalities. Some of the 
metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most 
absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern 
poet has possessed in an equal degree some of the highest 



126 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard and 
inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to 
other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to 
him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems 
not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived 
to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given 
to the world some great work of the very highest rank in 
design and execution. But, alas ! 

'O Aa^vts €/3a poov • eKXvae 8iVa 
Tov IMwcats (jiiXov av8pa, rbv ov Ni;/x<^aicriv a-n-e)^9yj. 

But we must return to Bunyan. The Pilgrim s Progress 
undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types are often 
inconsistent with each other ; and sometimes the allegorical 
disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is 
emblematic of death ; and we are told that every human being 
must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass 
through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at 
Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birth- 
right and about his own convictions of sin as Bunyan might 
have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels 
at the House Beautiful catechize Christiana's boys, as any 
good ladies might catechize any boys at a Sunday School. 
But we do not believe that any man, whatever might be his 
genius, and whatever his good luck, could long continue a 
figurative history without falling into many inconsistencies. 
We are sure that inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the 
worst into which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the 
shortest and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and 
the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and the History of JoJin 
Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can be 
properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not easy 
to make a simile go on all-fours. But we believe that no 
human ingenuity could produce such a centipede as a long 
allegory in which the correspondence between the outward 
sign and the thing signified should be exactly preserved. 



JOHN BUNYAN 127 

Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet achieved the 
adventure. The best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist 
can do is to present to his readers a succession of analogies, 
each of which may separately be striking and happy, without 
looking very nicely to see whether they harmonize with each 
other. This Bunyan has done ; and though a minute scrutiny 
may detect inconsistencies in every page of his Tale, the gen- 
eral effect which the Tale produces on all persons, learned and 
unlearned, proves that he has done well. The passages which 
it is most difficult to defend are those in which he altogether 
drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth of his pilgrims 
religious ejaculations and disquisitions better suited to his own 
pulpit at Bedford or Reading than to the Enchanted Ground 
or to the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even these passages, 
though we will not undertake to defend them against the 
objections of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We feel 
that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional 
glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be 
hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and appear 
before us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that 
which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, 
when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his 
mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have 
been an inanimate and uninteresting disguise. 

It is very amusing and very instructive to compare the 
Pilgrim s Progress with the Grace Aboiinding. The latter 
work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces of autobi- 
ography in the world. It is a full and open confession of the 
fancies which passed through the mind of an illiterate man, 
whose affections were warm, whose nerves were irritable, 
whose imagination was ungovernable, and who was under the 
influence of the strongest religious excitement. In whatever 
age Bunyan had lived, the history of his feelings would, in all 
probability, have been very curious. But the time in which his 
lot was cast was the time of a great stirring of the human 
mind. A tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the 



128 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

tyranny of the hierarchy, menaced the old ecclesiastical insti- 
tutions with destruction. To the gloomy regularity of one 
intolerant Church had succeeded the license of innumerable 
sects, drunk with the sweet and heady must of their new 
liberty. Fanaticism, engendered by persecution, and destined 
to engender persecution in turn, spread rapidly through society. 
Even the strongest and most commanding minds were not 
proof against this strange taint. Any time might have pro- 
duced George Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone 
belong the fanatic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and 
the hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell. 

The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excitable 
mind in an age of excitement. By most of his biographers he 
has been treated with gross injustice. They have understood 
in a popular sense all those strong terms of self-condemnation 
which he employed in a theological sense. They have, there- 
fore, represented him as an abandoned wretch, reclaimed by 
means almost miraculous, or, to use their favourite metaphor, 
" as a brand plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls 
him the depraved Bunyan, and the wicked tinker of Elstow. 
Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with the 
bitter accusations which the most pious people are in the habit 
of bringing against themselves, to understand literally all the 
strong expressions which are to be found in the Grace 
Abounding. It is quite clear, as Mr. Southey most justly 
remarks, that Bunyan never was a vicious man. He married 
very early ; and he solemnly declares that he was strictly faith- 
ful to his wife. He does not appear to have been a drunkard. 
He owns, indeed, that when a boy he never spoke without an 
oath. But a single admonition cured him of this bad habit 
for life ; and the cure must have been wrought early ; for at 
eighteen he was in the army of the Parliament, and if he had 
carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he would 
doubtless have received something more than an admonition 
from Serjeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Captain Hew- 
Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord, Bell-ringing and playing at 



JOHN BUNYAN 129 

hockey on Sundays seem to have been the worst vices of this 
depraved tinker. They would have passed for virtues with 
Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear that, from a very early age, 
Bunyan was a man of a strict life and of a tender conscience. 
"He had been," says Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even 
this we think too hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, 
so fine a gentleman as Lord Digby ; but he was a blackguard 
no otherwise than as every labouring man that ever lived has 
been a blackguard. Indeed Mr. Southey acknowledges this. 
" Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, 
breeding, and vocation. Scarcely, indeed, by possibility, could 
he have been otherwise." A man whose manners and senti- 
ments are decidedly below those of his class deserves to be 
called a blackguard ; but it is surely unfair to apply so strong 
a word of reproach to one who is only what the great mass of 
every community must inevitably be. 

Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has described 
with so much power of language prove, not that he was a 
worse man than his neighbours, but that his mind was con- 
stantly occupied by religious considerations, that his fervour 
exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination exercised 
despotic power over his body and mind. He heard voices 
from heaven. He saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant 
and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains. From those 
abodes he was shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible 
wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving 
to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time 
he was seized with an inclination to work miracles. At an- 
other time he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. 
He could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his 
infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. He 
spurned with his feet and struck with his hands at the de- 
stroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part in the 
salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent impulse urged 
him to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, and to 
break forth into prayer. At length he fancied that he had 



I30 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

committed the unpardonable sin. His agony convulsed his 
robust frame. He was, he says, as if his breastbone would 
split ; and this he took for a sign that he was destined to 
burst asunder like Judas, The agitation of his nerves made 
all his movements tremulous ; and this trembling, he supposed, 
was a visible mark of his reprobation, like that which had 
been set on Cain. At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice 
seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, but 
very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great calm in 
his soul. At another time, a word of comfort " was spoke 
loud unto him ; it showed a great word ; it seemed to be writ 
in great letters."' But these intervals of ease were short. His 
state, during two years and a half, was generally the most 
horrible that the human mind can imagine. " I walked," says 
he, with his own peculiar eloquence, " to a neighbouring town, 
and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very 
deep pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought 
me to ; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head ; but 
methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens 
did grudge to give me light, and as if the very stones in the 
street, and tiles upon the houses, did band themselves against 
me. Methought that they all combined together to banish me 
out of the world. I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell 
among them, because I had sinned against the Saviour. Oh, 
how happy now was every creature over I ! for they stood fast, 
and kept their station ; but I was gone and lost ! " Scarcely 
any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so 
strong, or of misery so acute. 

It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, over- 
hung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with 
blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, 
snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that 
Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruitful land of Beulah, in 
which he sojourned during the latter period of his pilgrimage. 
The only trace which his cruel sufferings and temptations 
seem to have left behind them was an affectionate compassion 



JOHN BUNYAN 1 31 

for those who were still in the state in which he had once 
been. Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and 
soothing as in his allegory. The feeling which predominates 
through the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, 
timid, and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of 
Mr. Feeble-Mind, of Mr. Despondency and his daughter 
Miss Much-afraid, the account of poor Little-faith who was 
robbed by the three thieves of his spending money, the 
description of Christian's terror in the dungeons of Giant 
Despair and in his passage through the river, all clearly show 
how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own mind had 
become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted with religious 
melancholy. 

Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, admits that 
if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appearance than in 
Bunyan's works, it would never have become a term of 
reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan with which we 
are acquainted are by no means more Calvinistic than the 
articles and homilies of the Church of England, The moder- 
ation of his opinions on the subject of predestination gave 
offence to some zealous persons. We have seen an absurd 
allegory, the heroine of which is named Hephzibah, written by 
some raving supralapsarian preacher who was dissatisfied with 
the mild theology of the Pilgrim s Progress. In this foolish 
book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter is called the 
Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. Mr. 
Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their Pilgrim s 
Progress, without a Giant Pope, in which the Interpreter is the 
Director, and the House Beautiful Grace's Hall. It is surely a 
remarkable proof of the power of Bunyan's genius that two 
religious parties, both of which regarded his opinions as 
heterodox, should have had recourse to him for assistance. 

There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the Pil- 
grim's Progress, which can be fully comprehended and enjoyed 
only by persons familiar with the history of the times through 
which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. Great-heart, 



132 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of course, alle- 
gorical ; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. He de- 
livers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his companions ; 
and, soon after, he gives battle to Giant Grim, who had taken 
upon him to back the lions. He expounds the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah to the household and guests of Gaius ; and 
then he sallies out to attack Slaygood, who was of the nature 
of flesh-eaters, in his den. These are inconsistencies ; but 
they are inconsistencies v^hich add, we think, to the interest of 
the narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan had 
in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, 
who prayed with- his men before he drilled them, who knew 
the spiritual state of every dragoon in his troop, and who, with 
the praises of God in his mouth and a two-edged sword in his 
hand, had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the 
swearing, drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford. 

Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the middle 
of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific of such men. 
Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was aimed at some partic- 
ular individual ; and this seems by no means improbable. At 
all events, Bunyan must have known many of those hypocrites 
who followed religion only when religion walked in silver 
slippers, when the sun shone, and when the people applauded. 
Indeed he might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends 
among the public men of his time. He might have found 
among the peers my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, 
and my Lord Fair-speech ; in the House of Commons, Mr. 
Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facing-both-ways ; nor 
•would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been 
wanting. The town of Bedford probably contained more than 
one politician who, after contriving to raise an estate by seek- 
ing the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep 
what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of 
the strumpets ; and more than one priest who, during repeated 
changes in the discipline and doctrines of the Church, had 
remained constant to nothing: but his benefice. 



JOHN BUr^YAN 133 

One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim s Prog- 
ress is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are 
described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to 
satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under 
Charles the Second. The license given to the witnesses for 
the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence 
of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the 
jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the 
Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary 
to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hate-good performs 
the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs him- 
self could have performed it. 

Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these 
honest gentlemen have witnessed againt thee ? 

Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence.'' 
Judge. Sirrah, sirrah ! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain 
immediately upon the place ; yet, that all men may see our gentleness 
towards thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say. 

No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss for 
parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness 
and cruelty of the lawyers of those times " sinned up to it still," 
and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful, 
before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and 
merciful when compared with the real trial of Alice Lisle 
before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of 
Jeffreys. 

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and inval- 
uable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide 
command over the English language. The vocabulary is the 
vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, 
if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would 
puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages 
which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. 
Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. 
For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for 
subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, 



1 34 SELECTIONS. FROM MACAULAY 

and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain work- 
ing men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our 
literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the 
old unpolluted English language — no book which shows so well 
how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how 
little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed, 

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name 
John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our 
refined forefathers, we suppose. Lord Roscommon's Essay on 
Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay 
on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to 
the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times ; 
and we are not afraid to say that, though there were many 
clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth 
century, there were only two minds which possessed the 
imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those 
minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim s 
Pros^ress. 



LORD CLIVE 

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, 
on an estate of no great value, near Market-Drayton, in Shrop- 
shire, In the reign of George the First, this moderate but 
ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who 
seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. 
He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between 
professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. 
He married a lady from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, 
and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest 
son, Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was 
born at the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of 
September, 1725. 

Some lineaments of the character of the man were early 
discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his 
relations when he was in his seventh year ; and from these 
letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will 
and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity 
which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of 
mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. 
" Fighting," says one of his uncles, " to which he is out of 
measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and 
imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." 
The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have 
heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of 
the lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and with what terror the 
inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. 
They also relate how he formed all the idle lads of the town 
into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers 
to submit to a tribute of apples and half-pence, in consider- 
ation of which he guaranteed the security of their windows. 

135 



136 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He was sent from school to school, making very little prog- 
ress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the 
character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, 
it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad 
would make a great figure in the world. But the general 
opinion seems to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if 
not a reprobate. His family expected nothing good from such 
slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange, 
therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in 
his eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East 
India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to 
die of a fever at" Madras. . . . 

Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this 
time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Company's settle- 
ments. In the preceding century Fort St. George had arisen 
on a barren spot beaten by a raging surf ; and in the neigh- 
bourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had 
sprung up, as towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity 
of the prophet's gourd. There were already in the suburbs 
many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the 
wealthy agents of the Company retired, after the labours of 
the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which 
springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of 
these mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, 
luxurious, and ostentatious than those of the high judicial and 
political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort 
was far less understood. Many devices which now mitigate 
the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life were 
unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe than at 
present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often 
been performed within three months, was then very seldom 
accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more 
than a year. Consequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much 
more estranged from his country, much more addicted to Ori- 
ental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society after his 
return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day. 



LORD CLIVE 137 

Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, by 
permission of the native government, an extensive authority, 
such as every great Indian landowner exercised within his own 
domain. But they had never dreamed of claiming independent 
power. The surrounding country was ruled by the Nabob of 
the Carnatic, a deputy of the Viceroy of the . Deccan, com- 
monly called the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of 
the mighty prince designated by our ancestors as the Great 
Mogul. Those names, once so august and formidable, still 
remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on 
a pension allowed to him by the English out of the revenues 
of the provinces which his ancestors ruled. There is still a 
Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British cantonment, 
and to whom a British resident gives, under the name of 
advice, commands which are not to be disputed. There is still 
a Mogul, who is permitted to play at holding courts and 
receiving petitions, but who has less power to help or hurt 
than the youngest civil servant of the Company. 

Clive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The 
ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the young 
adventurer picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and 
spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive in India till 
more than a year after he had left England. His situation at 
Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His 
pay was small. He had contracted debts. He was wretchedly 
lodged, no small calamity in a climate which can be made 
tolerable to an European only by spacious and well-placed 
apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommen- 
dation to a gentleman who might have assisted him ; but when 
he landed at Fort St. George he found that this gentleman 
had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty disposition 
withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was 
several months in India before he became acquainted with a 
single family. The climate affected his health and spirits. 
His duties were of a kind ill-suited to his ardent and daring 
character. He pined for his home, and in his letters to his 



138 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

relations expressed his feelings in language softer and more 
pensive than we should have expected either from the way- 
wardness of his boyhood or from the inflexible sternness of 
his later years. " I have not enjoyed," says he, "' one happy 
day since I left my native country"; and again, "I must 
confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native England, 
it affects me in a very peculiar manner. ... If I should 
be so far blest as to revisit again my own country, but more 
especially Manchester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I 
could hope or desire for would be presented before me in 
one view," 

One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The 
Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to 
have access to it. The young man devoted much of his leisure 
to reading, and acquired at this time almost all the knowledge 
of books that he ever possessed. As a boy he had been too 
idle, as a man he soon became too busy, for literary pursuits. 

But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the sor- 
rows of a homesick exile, could tame the desperate audacity 
of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had 
behaved to his schoolmasters, and was several times in 
danger of losing his situation. Twice, while residing in the 
Writers' Buildings, he attempted to destroy himself ; and twice 
the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. 
This circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape 
affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the pistol 
was really well loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation that 
surely he was reserved for something great. . . . 

The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally 
led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and 
intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages and 
casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's com- 
mission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one 
entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which 
he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate 
duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, 



LORD CLIVE 139 

speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave 
men. He soon began to show in his new calhng other quah- 
ties which had not before been discerned in him — judgment, 
sagacity, deference to legitimate authority. He distinguished 
himself highly in several operations against the French, and 
was particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then 
considered as the ablest British officer in India. 

Clive had been only a few months in the army when intel- 
ligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great 
Britain and France. Dupleix was in consequence compelled 
to restore Madras to the English Company ; and the young 
ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did 
indeed return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted 
it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities 
with the natives, and then again returned to it. While he 
was thus wavering betweeen a military and a commercial life, 
events took place which decided his choice. The politics of 
India assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the 
English and French Crowns ; but there arose between the 
English and French Companies trading to the East a war 
most eventful and important — a war in which the prize was 
nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the House 
of Tamerlane. 

The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the six- 
teenth century was long one of the most extensive and splen- 
did in the world. In no European kingdom was so large a 
population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue 
poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of 
the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed 
even travellers who had seen St. Peter's. The innumerable 
retinues and gorgeous decorations which surrounded the throne 
of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp 
of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys who held their posts 
by virtue of commissions from the Mogul ruled as many sub- 
jects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even 
the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of 



I40 . SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany or the Elector of Saxony. 

There can be Httle doubt that this great empire, powerful 
and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, 
even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst-gov- 
erned parts of Europe now are. The administration was tainted 
with all the vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices 
inseparable from the domination of race over race. The con- 
flicting pretensions of the princes of the royal house produced 
a long series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieu- 
tenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. 
Fierce tribes of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, fre- 
quently withheld tribute, repelled the armies of the govern- 
ment from the mountain fastnesses, and poured down in arms 
on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant 
maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions which 
shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, on 
the whole, retained, during some generations, an outward ap- 
pearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But throughout the 
long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that 
the vigour and policy of the prince could effect, was hastening 
to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 
1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from with- 
out co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast pro- 
ceeding within ; and in a few years the empire had undergone 
utter decomposition. . . . 

Such, or nearly such, was the change which passed on the 
Mogul empire during the forty years which followed the death 
of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in 
indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded pal- 
aces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buf- 
foons. A succession of ferocious invaders descended through 
the- western passes to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindo- 
stan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through 
the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures 
of which the masrnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier — 



LORD CLIVE 141 

the Peacock Throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda 
had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and 
the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after many strange 
vicissitudes, lately shone in the bracelet of Runjeet Sing, and 
is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The 
Afghan soon followed to complete the work of devastation 
which the Persian had begun. The warlike tribes of Raj poo- 
tana threw off the Mussulman yoke, A band of mercenary 
soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. 
The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands 
which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth 
a yet more formidable race — a race which was long the terror 
of every native power, and which, after many desperate and 
doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of 
England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this 
wild clan of plunderers first descended from their mountains ; 
and soon after his death every corner of his wide empire 
learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. 
Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. 
Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to 
sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guz- 
erat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they, though they 
had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. 
They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. 
Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted 
by their incursions. Wherever their kettle-drums were heard, 
the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his 
small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and chil- 
dren to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbour- 
hood of the hyasna and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed 
their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even 
the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped 
to pay this ignominious blackmail. The camp-fires of one 
rapacious leader were seen from the walls of the palace of 
Delhi. Another, at the head of his innumerable cavalry, de- 
scended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even 



142 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than 
a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Cal- 
cutta against the horsemen of Berar ; and the name of the 
Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger. 

Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority they 
became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the 
superiority of the house of Tamerlane ; as a Count of Flanders 
or a Duke of Burgundy might have acknowledged the su- 
periority of the most helpless driveller among the later Carlo- 
vingians. They might occasionally send to their titular 
sovereign a complimentary present, or solicit from him a title 
of honour. In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants 
removable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes. In 
this way originated those great Mussulman houses which 
formerly ruled Bengal and the Carnatic, and those which still, 
though in a state of vassalage, exercise some of the powers of 
royalty at Lucknow and Hyderabad. 

In what was this confusion to end ? Was the strife to 
continue during centuries ? Was it to terminate in the rise of 
another great monarchy ? Was the Mussulman or the Mahratta 
to be the Lord of India .? Was another Baber to descend from 
the mountains, and to lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and 
Khorassan against a wealthier and less warlike race ? None of 
these events seemed improbable. But scarcely any man, how- 
ever sagacious, would have thought it possible that a trading 
company, separated from India by fifteen thousand miles of sea, 
and possessing in India only a few acres for purposes of 
commerce, would, in less than a hundred years, spread its 
empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the 
Himalayas ; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to 
forget their mutual feuds in common subjection ; would tame 
down even those wild races which had resisted the most 
powerful of the Moguls ; and, having united under its laws a 
hundred millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms 
far to the east of the Burrampooter and far to the west of the 
Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of Ava, and seat 
its vassal on the throne of Candahar. 



LORD CLIVE 143 

The man who first saw that it was possible to found an 
European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy was 
Dupleix. His restless, capacious, and inventive mind had 
formed this scheme at a time when the ablest servants of the 
English Company were busied only about invoices and bills of 
lading. Nor had he only proposed to himself the end. He 
had also a just and distinct view of the means by which it was 
to be attained. He clearly saw that the greatest force which 
the princes of India could bring into the field would be no 
match for a small body of men trained in the discipline and 
guided by the tactics of the West. He saw also that the 
natives of India might, under European commanders, be formed 
into armies such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to 
command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy and 
convenient way in which an European adventurer could exercise 
sovereignty in India was to govern the motions, and to speak 
through the mouth, of some glittering puppet dignified by the 
title of Nabob or Nizam. The arts both of war and policy, 
which a few years later were employed with such signal success 
by the English, were first understood and practised by this 
ingenious and aspiring Frenchman. 

The situation of India was such that scarcely any aggression 
could be without a pretext, either in old laws or in recent 
practice. All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty ; and 
the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives 
confounded the confusion by applying to Asiatic politics the 
public law of the West and analogies drawn from the feudal 
system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an inde- 
pendent prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so. He 
was independent in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as 
a mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no difficulty ; 
for he was so in theory. If it was convenient to consider his 
office as an hereditary dignity, or as a dignity held during life 
only, or as a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the 
Mogul, arguments and precedents might be found for every 
one of those views. The party who had the heir of Baber in 
their hands represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, 



144 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities were 
bound to obey. The party against whom his name was used 
did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining that the empire 
was in fact dissolved, and that though it might be decent to 
treat the Mogul with respect, as a venerable relic of an order 
of things which had passed away, it was absurd to regard him 
as the real master of Hindostan. 

In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of the new 
masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of the 
Deccan. His authority descended to his son, Nazir Jung. Of 
the provinces subject to this high functionary, the Carnatic was 
the wealthiest and the most extensive. It was governed by 
an ancient Nabob, whose name the English corrupted into 
Anaverdy Khan, 

But there were pretenders to the government both of the 
viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirzapha Jung, a 
grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the competitor of 
Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of a former Nabob of 
the Carnatic, disputed the title of Anaverdy Khan, In the un- 
settled state of Indian law it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung 
and Chunda Sahib to make out something like a claim of right. 
In a society altogether disorganized, they had no difficulty in 
finding greedy adventurers to follow their standards. They 
united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied for 
assistance to the French, whose fame had been raised by their 
success against the English in a recent war on the coast of 
Coromandel. 

Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the subtle 
and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of the Carnatic, to 
make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under their names the 
whole of Southern India — this was, indeed, an attractive pros- 
pect. He allied himself with the pretenders, and sent four hun- 
dred French soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after 
the European fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. 
A battle was fought. The French distinguished themselves 
greatly, Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son, 



LORD CLIVE 145 

Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known in England as 
the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the eloquence of Burke 
a most unenviable immortality, fled with a scanty remnant of 
his army to Trichinopoly ; and the conquerors became at once 
masters of almost every part of the Carnatic. 

This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix, 
After some months of fighting, negotiation, and intrigue, his 
ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed everywhere. 
Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his own followers ; 
Mirzapha Jung was master of the Deccan ; and the triumph 
of French arms and French policy was complete. At Pondi- 
cherry all was exultation and festivity. Salutes were fired 
from the batteries, and Te Deziin sung in the churches. The new 
Nizam came thither to visit his allies ; and the ceremony of his 
installation was performed there with great pomp. Dupleix, 
dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans of the highest 
rank, entered the town in the same palanquin with the Nizam, 
and, in the pageant which followed, took precedence of all 
the court. He was declared Governor of India from the river 
Krishna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as France, 
with authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He 
was intrusted with the command of seven thousand cavalry. 
It was announced that no mint would be suffered to exist in the 
Carnatic except that at Pondicherry. A large portion of the 
treasures which former Viceroys of the Deccan had accumu- 
lated had found its way into the coffers of the French gov- 
ernor. It was rumoured that he had received two hundred 
thousand pounds sterling in money, besides many valuable 
jewels. In fact, there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. 
He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost absolute 
power. No honour or emolument could be obtained from the 
government but by his intervention. No petition, unless 
signed by him, was perused by the Nizam. 

Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months. 
But another prince of the same house was raised to the throne 
by French influence, and ratified all the promises of his 



146 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest potentate in India. 
His countrymen boasted that his name was mentioned with 
awe even in the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native 
population looked with amazement on the progress which, in 
the short space of four years, an European adventurer had 
made towards dominion in Asia. Nor was the vainglorious 
Frenchman content with the reality of power. He loved to 
display his greatness with arrogant ostentation before the eyes 
of his subjects and of his rivals. Near the spot where his 
policy had obtained its chief triumph — by the fall of Nazir 
Jung and the elevation of Mirzapha — he determined to erect a 
column, on the four sides of which four pompous inscriptions, 
in four languages, should proclaim his glory to all the nations 
of the East. Medals stamped with emblems of his successes 
were buried beneath the foundations of this stately pillar, and 
round it arose a town bearing the haughty name of Dupleix 
Fatihabad, which is, being interpreted, the City of the Victory 
of Dupleix. 

The English had made some feeble and irresolute attempts 
to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the rival Company, 
and continued to recognize Mahommed Ali as Nabob of the 
Carnatic. But the dominions of Mahommed Ali consisted of 
Trichinopoly alone ; and Trichinopoly was now invested by 
Chunda Sahib and his French auxiliaries. To raise the siege 
seemed impossible. The small force which was then at 
Madras had no commander. Major Lawrence had returned 
to England ; and not a single officer of established character 
remained in the settlement. The natives had learned to look 
with contempt on the mighty nation which was soon to con- 
quer and to rule them. They had seen the French colours 
flying on Fort St. George ; they had seen the chiefs of the 
English factory led in triumph through the streets of Pondi- 
cherry ; they had seen the arms and counsels of Dupleix 
everywhere successful, while the opposition which the author- 
ities of Madras had made to his progress had served only to 
expose their own weakness and to heighten his glory. At 



LORD CLIVE 147 

this moment, the valour and genius of an obscure EngHsh 
youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune. 

Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating for 
some time between a military and a commercial life, he had at 
length been placed in a post which partook of both characters 
— that of commissary to the troops, with the rank of captain. 
The present emergency called forth all his powers. He repre- 
sented to his superiors that, unless some vigorous effort were 
made, Trichinopoly would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan 
would perish, and the French would become the real masters 
of the whole peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary 
to strike some daring blow. If an attack were made on 
Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic and the favourite residence 
of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichi- 
nopoly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, 
now thoroughly alarmed by the success of Dupleix, and appre- 
hensive that, in the event of a new war between France and 
Great Britain, Madras would be instantly taken and destroyed, 
approved of Clive 's plan, and intrusted the execution of it to 
himself. The young captain was put at the head of two 
hundred English soldiers, and three hundred sepoys, armed 
and disciplined after the European fashion. Of the eight 
officers who commanded this little force under him, only two 
had ever been in action, and four of the eight were factors of 
the Company, whom Clive's example had induced to offer 
their services. The weather was stormy ; but Clive pushed 
on, through thunder, lightning, and rain, to the gates of 
Arcot. The garrison, in a panic, evacuated the fort, and the 
English entered it without a blow. 

But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to retain 
undisturbed possession of his conquest. He instantly began 
to collect provisions, to throw up works, and to make prep- 
arations for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled 
at his approach, had now recovered from its dismay, and, 
having been swelled by large reinforcements from the neigh- 
bourhood to a force of three thousand men, encamped close 



148 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to the town. At dead of night, Clive marched out of the fort, 
attacked the camp by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed 
the rest, and returned to his quarters without having lost a 
single man. 

The intelligence of these events was soon carried to 
Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was besieging 
Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four thousand men 
from his camp and sent them to Arcot. They were speedily 
joined by the remains of the force which Clive had lately 
scattered. They were further strengthened by two thousand 
men from Vellore, and by a still more important reinforce- 
ment of a hundred and fifty French soldiers whom Dupleix 
despatched from Pondicherry. The whole of his army, amount- 
ing to about ten thousand men, was under the command of 
Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib. 

Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, which 
seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were 
ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts too narrow to admit the 
guns, the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little 
garrison had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now con- 
sisted of a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred 
sepoys. Only four officers were left ; the stock of provisions 
was scanty ; and the commander, who had to conduct the 
defence under circumstances so discouraging, was a young 
man of five-and-twenty, who had been bred a bookkeeper. 

During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days the 
young captain maintained the defence with a firmness, vigi- 
lance, and ability which would have done honour to the oldest 
marshal in Europe. The breach, however, increased day by 
day. The garrison began to feel the pressure of hunger. 
Under such circumstances, any troops so scantily provided 
with officers might have been expected to show signs of insub- 
ordination ; and the danger was peculiarly great in a force com- 
posed of men differing widely from each other in extraction, 
colour, language, manners, and religion. But the devotion of 
the little band to its chief surpassed anything that is related 



LORD CLIVE 149 

of the Tenth Legion of Caesar, or of the Old Guard of 
Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their 
scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given 
to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the 
natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained 
away from the rice would suffice for themselves. History con- 
tains no more touching instance of military fidelity or of the 
influence of a commanding mind. 

An attempt made by the government of Madras to relieve 
the place had failed. But there was hope from another quarter. 
A body of six thousand Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, 
under the command of a chief named Morari Row, had been 
hired to assist Mahommed Ali ; but thinking the French 
power irresistible, and the triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, 
they had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the 
Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused them 
from their torpor. Morari Row declared that he had never 
before believed that Englishmen could fight, but that he 
would willingly help them since he saw that they had spirit 
to help themselves. Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas 
were in motion. It was necessary for him to be expeditious. 
He first tried negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, 
which were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his pro- 
posals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, 
and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in 
reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an 
usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well 
to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach 
defended by English soldiers. 

Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was 
well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great 
Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the memory of 
Hosein, the son of Ali, The history of Islam contains nothing 
more touching than the event which gave rise to that solem- 
nity. The mournful legend relates how the chief of the Fati- 
mites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, 



I50 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

drank his latest draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer ; 
how the assassins carried his head in triumph ; how the tyrant 
smote the lifeless lips with his staff ; and how a few old men 
recollected with tears that they had seen those lips pressed to 
the lips of the Prophet of God. After the lapse of near twelve 
centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the 
fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms of the devout 
Moslems of India. They work themselves up to such agonies 
of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have given up 
the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement. They 
believe that whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against 
the infidels atones by his death for all the sins of his life, and 
passes at once to the garden of the Houris. It was at this 
time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot. Stimu- 
lating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious zeal, 
and the besiegers, drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang, 
rushed furiously to the attack. 

Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had 
made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown 
himself on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was 
instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before 
them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. 
It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of 
these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner 
felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and 
rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had 
urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which 
filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners 
at that post did not understand their business, took the man- 
agement of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft 
in a few minutes. When the moat was dry, the assailants 
mounted with great boldness ; but they were received with a 
fire so heavy and so well-directed, that it soon quelled the 
courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear 
ranks of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a 
constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on 



LORD CLIVE 151 

the living mass below. After three desperate onsets, the 
besiegers retired behind the ditch. 

The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the 
assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. The 
besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of 
the attack. But when the day broke, the enemy were no more 
to be seen. They had retired, leaving to the English several 
guns and a large quantity of ammunition. 

The news was received at Fort St. George with transports 
of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded as a man equal 
to any command. Two hundred English soldiers and seven 
hundred sepoys were sent to him, and with this force he 
instantly commenced offensive operations. He took the fort 
of Timery, effected a junction with a division of Morari Row's 
army, and hastened by forced marches to attack Rajah Sahib, 
who was at the head of about five thousand men, of whom 
three hundred were French. The action was sharp ; but Clive 
gained a complete victory. The military chest of Rajah Sahib 
fell into the hands of the conquerors. Six hundred sepoys 
who had served in the enemy's army came over to Clive's 
quarters and were taken into the British service. Conjeveram 
surrendered without a blow. The governor of Arnee deserted 
Chunda Sahib, and recognized the title of Mahommed Ali. . . . 

The great commercial companies of Europe had long 
possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as 
they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogly. Higher up 
the stream the Dutch held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the 
English had built Fort William. A church and ample ware- 
houses rose in the vicinity. A row of spacious houses, belonging 
to the chief factors of the East India Company, lined the banks 
of the river ; and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large 
and busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great 
opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered 
by the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable 
huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to water-fowl 



152 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, and the 
Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest 
equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement 
stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent to 
the Government ; and they were, like other great landholders, 
permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain. 

The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and 
Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English 
called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the other viceroys of the 
Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756, 
and the sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under 
twenty years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. 
Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human beings ; 
and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of his 
class. His understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper 
naturally unamiable. His education had been such as would 
have enervated even a vigorous intellect and perverted even a 
generous disposition. He was unreasonable, because nobody 
ever dared to reason with him ; and selfish, because he had 
never been made to feel himself dependent on the goodwill of 
others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and his 
mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits, 
which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His 
chosen companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of 
the people, and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and 
servility. It is said that he had arrived at the last stage of 
human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own 
sake ; when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to 
be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agree- 
able excitement. It had early been his amusement to torture 
beasts and birds ; and when he grew up, he enjoyed with still 
keener relish the misery of his fellow-creatures. 

From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English, It was 
his whim to do so ; and his whims were never opposed. He 
had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which 
might be obtained by plundering them ; and his feeble and 



LORD CLIVE 153 

uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches 
of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, 
would not compensate him for what he must lose if the 
European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be 
driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts for a 
quarrel were readily found. The English, in expectation of a 
war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without 
special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he 
longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not 
been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah 
marched with a great army against Fort William. 

The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by 
Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal 
were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by 
the approaching danger. The Governor, who had heard much 
of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, 
jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The 
military commandant thought that he could not do better than 
follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble 
resistance ; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands 
of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp 
in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, 
the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before 
him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, 
and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had 
found ; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest. 

Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its 
singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by 
which it was followed. The English captives were left to the 
mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure 
them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber 
known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a 
single European malefactor that dungeon would, in such a 
climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only 
twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. 
It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of 



154 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of Eng- 
land by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The 
number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When 
they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the 
soldiers were joking ; and, being in high spirits on account of 
the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed 
and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon dis- 
covered their mistake. They expostulated ; they entreated ; 
but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesi- 
tated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the 
sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them. 
Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which 
Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped 
his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the 
horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that 
night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. 
Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence 
of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer 
was that nothing could be done without the Nabob's orders, 
that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if any- 
body woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. 
They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the 
windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel 
mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, 
blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The 
gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted 
with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length 
the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The day 
broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted 
the door to be opened. But it was some time before the 
soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on 
each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate 
had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length 
a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their 
own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out 
of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead 



LORD CLIVE 155 

bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into 
it promiscuously and covered up. 

But these things — which, after the lapse of more than 
eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror — awakened 
neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. 
He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no 
tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from 
whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart ; but 
those from whom it was thought that anything could be 
extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable 
to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, 
threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together 
with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing 
more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the 
Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings 
of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds and fed 
only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of 
the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One 
Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in 
the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. 

Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his nom- 
inal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the 
most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort 
William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, 
and directed that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta 
should thenceforward be called Alinagore ; that is to say, the 
Port of God. 

In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, 
and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of 
the whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight 
hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined 
that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogly, and that 
Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval 
armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine 
hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and 
fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to 



156 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the 
Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the 
expedition sailed ; but it had to make its way against adverse 
winds and did not reach Bengal till December. 

The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moorshed- 
abad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign 
countries that he often used to say that there were not ten 
thousand men in all Europe ; and it had never occurred to 
him as possible that the English would dare to invade his 
dominions. But, though undisturbed by any fear of their 
military power, he began to miss them greatly. His revenues 
fell off ; and his ministers succeeded in making him understand 
that a ruler may sometimes find it more profitable to protect 
traders in the open enjoyment of their gains than to put them 
to the torture for the purpose of discovering hidden chests of 
gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit the Com- 
pany to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when 
he received the news that an English armament was in the 
Hoogly. He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at 
Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta. 

Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. 
He took Budge-budge, routed the garrison of Fort William, 
recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogly. The Nabob, 
already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was 
confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their 
power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs 
of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, 
and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled. 

Clive's profession was war ; and he felt that there was 
something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah 
Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, chiefly 
composed of servants of the Company who had fled from 
Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs ; and these 
persons were eager to be restored to their posts and compen- 
sated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprized 
that war had commenced in Europe, and apprehensive of an 



LORD CLIVE 157 

attack from the French, became impatient for the return of the 
armament. The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances 
of a contest doubtful ; and Clive consented to treat, though he 
expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so 
glorious a manner as he could have wished. . . . 

All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly from 
Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, and wrote to 
the Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous 
letters. He set forth all the wrongs which the British had 
suffered, offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbi- 
tration of Meer Jalfier, and concluded by announcing that, 
as the rains were about to set in, he and his men would do 
themselves the honour of waiting on his Highness for an 
answer. 

Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and 
marched to encounter the English. It had been agreed that 
Meer Jaffier should separate himself from the Nabob, and 
carry over his division to Clive. But, as the decisive moment 
approached, the fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambi- 
tion. Clive had advanced to Cossimbuzar ; the Nabob lay with 
a mighty power a few miles off at Plassey ; and still Meer 
Jaffier delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive 
answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English general. 

Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could place 
no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of his confed- 
erate ; and, whatever confidence he might place in his own 
military talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, 
it was no light thing to engage an army twenty times as 
numerous as his own. Before him lay a river over which it 
A'as easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not 
one of his little band would ever return. On this occasion, 
for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during 
a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making 
a decision. He called a council of war. The majority pro- 
nounced against fighting, and Clive declared his concurrence 



158 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

with the majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had 
never called but one council of war, and that if he had taken 
the advice of that council the British would never have been 
masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting broken up 
when he was himself again. He retired alone under the shade 
of some trees, and passed near an hour there in thought. He 
came back determined to put everything to the hazard, and 
gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing the 
river on the morrow. 

The river was passed ; and, at the close of a toilsome day's 
march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a 
grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. 
Clive was unable to sleep ; he heard, through the whole night, 
the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the 
Nabob. It is not strange that even his stout heart should now 
and then have sunk when he reflected against what odds, and 
for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend. 

Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. His 
mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and 
horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and near- 
ness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one 
who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloom- 
ily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the 
furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in 
the Black Hole. 

The day broke — the day which was to decide the fate of 
India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring through 
many openings of the camp, began to move towards the grove 
where the English lay. Forty thousand infantry, armed with 
firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain. 
They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the 
largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and 
each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some smaller 
guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were 
perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, 
drawn, not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from 



LORD CLIVE 159 

the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces ; and 
the practised eye of Chve could perceive that both the men 
and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. 
The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude 
consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly a 
thousand were English, and all were led by English officers, 
and trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in the 
ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth 
Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many honour- 
able additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, 
the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Priimts in Indis. 

The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the 
artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the 
few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. Several 
of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah's service 
fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own 
terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged 
on him the expediency of retreating. The insidious advice, 
agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was 
readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this 
order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and or- 
dered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited 
multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No 
mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely 
routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone ventured to 
confront the English, were swept down the stream of fugitives. 
In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, 
never to reassemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished 
were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, innu- 
merable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power 
of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed 
and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near 
sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more 
populous than Great Britain. 

Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during 
the action. But as soon as he saw that the fate of the day 



i6o SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when 
the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. The next 
morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy 
as to the reception which awaited him there. He gave evident 
signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive him with 
the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speed- 
ily removed. Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, 
saluted him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, 
Bahar, and Orissa, listened graciously to his apologies, and 
advised him to march without delay to Moorshedabad. 

Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all 
the speed with wliich a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived 
at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four hours. There 
he called his councillors round him. The wisest advised him 
to put himself into the hands of the English, from whom he 
had nothing worse to fear than deposition and confinement. 
But he attributed this suggestion to treachery. Others urged 
him to try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, 
and issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere 
even during one day to a manly resolution. He learned that 
Meer Jaffier had arrived, and his terrors became insupport- 
able. Disguised in a mean dress, with a casket of jewels in 
his hand, he let himself down at night from a window of his 
palace, and, accompanied by only two attendants, embarked on 
the river for Patna. 

In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by 
two hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For 
his residence had been assigned a palace which was sur- 
rounded by a garden so spacious that all the troops who 
accompanied him could conveniently encamp within it. The 
ceremony of the installation of Meer Jaffier was instantly per- 
formed. Clive led the new Nabob to the seat of honour, 
placed him on it, presented to him, after the immemorial 
fashion of the East, an offering of gold, and then, turning to 
the natives who filled the hall, congratulated them on the 
good fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. . . . 



LORD CLIVE i6i 

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company 
and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds 
sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Moor- 
shedabad to Fort William. The fleet which conveyed this 
treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and per- 
formed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music 
playing. Calcutta, which a few months before had been 
desolate, was now more prosperous than ever. Trade revived, 
and the signs of affluence appeared in every English house. 
As to Clive, there was lo limit to his acquisitions but his own 
moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. 
There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, 
immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom 
be detected the florins and byzants with which, before any 
European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the 
Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive 
walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies 
and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted 
between two and three hundred thousand pounds. . . . 

Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for Eng- 
land. At home, honours and rewards awaited him, not indeed 
equal to his claims or to his ambition, but still such as, when 
his age, his rank in the army, and his original place in society 
are considered, must be pronounced rare and splendid. He 
was raised to the Irish peerage and encouraged to expect an 
English title. George the Third, who had just ascended the 
throne, received him with great distinction. The ministers 
paid him marked attention ; and Pitt, whose influence in the 
House of Commons and in the country was unbounded, was 
eager to mark his regard for one whose exploits had contributed 
so much to the lustre of that memorable period. The great 
orator had already in Parliament described Clive as a heaven- 
born general, as a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, 
had displayed a military genius which might excite the admira- 
tion of the King of Prussia. There were then no reporters in 
the gallery ; but these words, emphatically spoken by the first 



1 62 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

statesman of the age, had passed from mouth to mouth, had 
been transmitted to Chve in Bengal, and had greatly delighted 
and flattered him. Indeed, since the death of Wolfe, Clive 
was the only English general of whom his countrymen had 
much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had 
been generally unfortunate ; and his single victory, having been 
gained over his countrymen and used with merciless severity, 
had been more fatal to his popularity than his many defeats. 
Conway, versed in the learning of his profession, and personally 
courageous, wanted vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, gen- 
erous, and as brave as a lion, had neither science nor genius. 
Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of his 
contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe, the 
imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. It was 
under the command of a foreign general that the British had 
triumphed at Minden and Warburg. The people therefore, as 
was natural, greeted with pride and delight a captain of their 
own, whose native courage and self-taught skill had placed 
him on a level with the great tacticians of Germany. 

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with 
the first grandees of England. There remains proof that he 
had remitted more than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds 
through the Dutch East India Company, and more than forty 
thousand pounds through the English Company. The amount 
which he had sent home through private houses was also con- 
siderable. He had invested great sums in jewels, then a very 
common mode of remittance from India. His purchases of 
diamonds at Madras alone . amounted to twenty-five thousand 
pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money, he had his 
Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-seven thousand a 
year. His whole annual income, in the opinion of Sir John 
Malcolm, who is desirous to state it as low as possible, exceeded 
forty thousand pounds ; and incomes of forty thousand pounds 
at the time of the accession of George the Third were at least 
as rare as incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We 
may safely affirm that no Englishman who started with nothing 



LORD CLIVE 163 

has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early 
age of thirty-four. . , . 

At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite 
uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions ; a disorgan- 
ized administration ; the natives pillaged, yet the Company 
not enriched ; every fleet bringing back fortunate adventurers 
who were able to purchase manors and to build stately dwell- 
ings, yet bringing back also alarming accounts of the financial 
prospects of the government ; war on the frontiers ; disaffec- 
tion in the army ; the national character disgraced by excesses 
resembling those of Verres and Pizarro — such was the spectacle 
which dismayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. 
The general cry was that Clive, and Clive alone, could save 
the empire which he had founded. 

This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner at a 
very full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all parties, 
forgetting their feuds and trembling for their dividends, 
exclaimed that Clive was the man whom the crisis required, 
that the oppressive proceedings which had been adopted 
respecting his estate ought to be dropped, and that he ought 
to be entreated to return to India. 

Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make such 
propositions to the Directors, as would, he trusted, lead to an 
amicable settlement. But there was a still greater difficulty. 
It was proper to tell them that he never would undertake the 
government of Bengal while his enemy Sulivan was chairman 
of the Company. The tumult was violent. Sulivan could 
scarcely obtain a hearing. An overwhelming majority of the 
assembly was on Clive's side. Sulivan wished to try the result 
of a ballot. But, according to the bye-laws of the Company, 
there can be no ballot except on a requisition signed by 
nine proprietors ; and, though hundreds were present, nine 
persons could not be found to set their hands to such a 
requisition. 

Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and Com- 
mander-in-chief of the British possessions in Bengal. But he 



1 64 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter on his office 
till the event of the next election of Directors should be known. 
The contest was obstinate ; but Clive triumphed. Sulivan, 
lately absolute master of the India House, was within a vote 
of losing his own seat ; and both the chairman and the deputy- 
chairman were friends of the new governor. 

Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed 
for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, he reached 
Calcutta ; and he found the whole machine of government even 
more fearfully disorganized than he had anticipated. Meer 
Jaffier, who had some time before lost his eldest son Meeran, 
had died while Clive was on his voyage out. The English 
functionaries at Calcutta had already received from home strict 
orders not to accept presents from the native princes. But, 
eager for gain, and unaccustomed to respect the commands of 
their distant, ignorant, and negligent masters, they again set up 
the throne of Bengal to sale. About one hundred and forty 
thousand pounds sterling was distributed among nine of the 
most powerful servants of the Company ; and, in consideration 
of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob was placed 
on the seat of his father. The news of the ignominious bargain 
met Clive on his arrival. In a private letter written immediately 
after his landing to an intimate friend, he poured out his feel- 
ings in language, which, proceeding from a man so daring, so 
resolute, and so little given to theatrical display of sentiment, 
seems to us singularly touching. "Alas!" he says, "how is 
the English name sunk ! I could not avoid paying the tribute 
of a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British 
nation — irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by 
that great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to whom 
we must be accountable if there be a hereafter, that I am come 
out with a mind superior to all corruption, and that I am 
determined to destroy these great and growing evils, or perish 
in the attempt." 

The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full deter- 
mination to make a thorough reform, and to use for that 



LORD CLIVE 165 

purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil and military, 
which had been confided to him. Johnstone, one of the boldest 
and worst men in the assembly, made some show of opposition. 
Clive interrupted him, and haughtily demanded whether he 
meant to question the power of the new government. Johnstone 
was cowed, and disclaimed any such intention. All the faces 
round the board grew long and pale, and not another syllable 
of dissent was uttered. 

Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a 
year and a half, and in that short time effected one of the 
most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was 
accomplished by any statesman. This was the part of his life 
on which he afterwards looked back with most pride. He had 
it in his power to triple his already splendid fortune ; to connive 
at abuses while pretending to remove them ; to conciliate the 
goodwill of all the English in Bengal by giving up to their 
rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the 
island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints 
had little chance of being heard across fifteen thousand miles 
of ocean. He knew that if he applied himself in earnest to the 
work of reformation, he should raise every bad passion in arms 
against him. He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, 
would be the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having 
counted on accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to 
support peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But 
he had chosen the good part, and he called up all the force 
of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first 
success seemed hopeless ; but soon all obstacles began to bend 
before that iron courage and that vehement will. The receiving 
of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private 
trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The 
whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these 
measures. But the inexorable governor declared that, if he 
could not find support at Fort William, he would procure it 
elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants from Madras to 
assist him in carrying on the administration. The most factious 



1 66 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of his opponents he turned out of their offices. The rest sub- 
mitted to what was inevitable, and in a very short time all 
resistance was quelled. 

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent 
abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not 
fail to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pressure of his 
strong hand was withdrawn. The Company had followed a 
mistaken policy with respect to the remuneration of its servants. 
The salaries were too low to afford even those indulgences 
which are necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans 
in a tropical climate. To lay by a rupee from such scanty pay 
was impossible. It could not be supposed that men of even 
average abilities would consent to pass the best years of life 
in exile, under a burning sun, for no other consideration than 
these stinted wages. It had accordingly been understood, from 
a very early period, that the Company's agents were at liberty 
to enrich themselves by their private trade. This practice had 
been seriously injurious to the commercial interests of the cor- 
poration. That very intelligent observer. Sir Thomas Roe, in 
the reign of James the First, strongly urged the Directors to 
apply a remedy to the abuse. "Absolutely prohibit the private 
trade," said he; "for your business will be better done. I 
know this is harsh. Men profess they come not for bare 
wages. But you will take away this plea if you give great 
wages to their content ; and then you know what you part 
from." 

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered to 
the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect 
gains of the agents. The pay of a member of Council was only 
three hundred pounds a year. Yet it was notorious that such 
a functionary could not live in India for less than ten times 
that sum ; and it could not be expected that he would be 
content to live even handsomely in India without laying up 
something against the time of his return to England. This 
system, before the conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount 
of the dividends payable to the proprietors, but could do little 



LORD CLIVE 167 

harm in any other way. But the Company was now a ruhng 
body. Its servants might still be called factors, junior mer- 
chants, senior merchants. But they were in truth proconsuls, 
propraetors, procurators, of extensive regions. They had 
immense power. Their regular pay was universally admitted 
to be insufficient. They were, by the ancient usage of the 
service, and by the implied permission of their employers, 
warranted in enriching themselves by indirect means ; and this 
had been the origin of the frightful oppression and corruption 
which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly that it was 
absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in 
penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual 
which should not be coupled with a plan for liberally remu- 
nerating the civil servants of the Company. The Directors, he 
knew, were not disposed to sanction any increase of the salaries 
out of their own treasury. The only course which remained 
open to the governor was one which exposed him to much 
misrepresentation, but which we think him fully justified in 
adopting. He appropriated to the support of the service the 
monopoly of salt, which has formed, down to our own time, a 
principal head of Indian revenue ; and he divided the proceeds 
according to a scale which seems to have been not unreason- 
ably fixed. He was in consequence accused by his enemies, and 
has been accused by historians, of disobeying his instructions, 
of violating his promises, of authorizing that very abuse which 
it was his special mission to destroy — namely, the trade of the 
Company's servants. But every discerning and impartial judge 
will admit that there was really nothing in common between 
the system which he set up and that which he was sent to 
destroy. The monopoly of salt had been a source of revenue 
to the Governments of India before Clive was born. It con- 
tinued to be so long after his death. The civil servants were 
clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue, and all 
that Clive did was to charge a particular portion of the reve- 
nue with their maintenance. He thus, while he put an end to 
the practices by which gigantic fortunes had been rapidly 



1 68 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed in the 
East the means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence. 
Yet such is the injustice of mankind that none of those acts 
which are the real stains of his life has drawn on him so much 
obloquy as this measure, which was in truth a reform necessary 
to the success of all his other reforms. 

He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants : that 
of the army was more formidable. Some of the retrenchments 
which had been ordered by the Directors affected the interests 
of the military service and a storm arose such as even Caesar 
would not willingly have faced. It was no light thing to en- 
counter the resistance of those who held the power of the 
sword in a country governed only by the sword. Two hundred 
English officers engaged in a conspiracy against the govern- 
ment, and determined to resign their commissions on the same 
day, not doubting that Clive would grant any terms rather than 
see the army (on which alone the British empire in the East 
rested) left without commanders. They little knew the uncon- 
querable spirit with which they had to deal. Clive had still a 
few officers round his person on whom he could rely. He sent 
to Fort St. George for a fresh supply. He gave commissions 
even to mercantile agents who were disposed to support him 
at this crisis, and he sent orders that every officer who 
resigned should be instantly brought up to Calcutta. The con- 
spirators found that they had miscalculated. The governor 
was inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys, over 
whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence, stood 
by him with unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were 
arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dis- 
pirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. 
Many of them declared their repentance even with tears. The 
younger offenders Clive treated with lenity. To the ringleaders 
he was inflexibly severe, but his severity was pure from all 
taint of private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just 
authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and 
injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators 



LORD CLIVE 169 

was accused of having planned the assassination of the Gover- 
nor ; but CHve would not listen to the charge. " The officers," 
he said, " are Englishmen, not assassins." 

While he reformed the civil service and established his 
authority over the army, he was equally successful in his for- 
eign policy. His landing on Indian ground was the signal for 
immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude, with a large army, 
lay at that time on the frontier of Bahar. He had been joined 
by many Afghans and Mahrattas, and there was no small 
reason to expect a general coalition of all the native powers 
against the English. But the name of Clive quelled in an 
instant all opposition. The enemy implored peace in the hum- 
blest language, and submitted to such terms as the new 
governor chose to dictate. 

At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed 
on a new footing. The power of the English in that province 
had hitherto been altogether undefined. It was unknown to 
the ancient constitution of the empire, and it had been ascer- 
tained by no compact. It resembled the power which, in the 
last decrepitude of the Western Empire, was exercised over 
Italy by the great chiefs of foreign mercenaries — the Ricimers 
and the Odoacers — who put up and pulled down at their 
pleasure a succession of insignificant princes, dignified with the 
names of Caesar and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, 
the warlike strangers at length found it expedient to give to 
a domination which had been established by arms the sanction 
of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic 
to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium a commission 
appointing him ruler of Italy ; and Clive, in the same manner, 
applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal grant of the powers 
of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul was ab- 
solutely helpless ; and, though he murmured, had reason to be 
well pleased that the English were disposed to give solid rupees 
(which he never could have extorted from them) in exchange 
for a few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain 
was speedily struck, and the titular sovereign of Hindostan 



I/O SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

issued a warrant empowering the Company to collect and 
administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. 

There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities 
in the same relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and 
Childerics of the Merovingian line stood to their able and 
vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to Charles Martel and to 
Pepin. At one time Clive had almost made up his mind to 
discard this phantom altogether ; but he afterwards thought 
that it might be convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, 
particularly in dealings with other European nations. The 
French, the Dutch, and the Danes would, he conceived, sub- 
mit far more readily to the authority of the native Prince, 
whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to 
that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may at that 
time have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found 
to be too flimsy to impose on anybody, and it was altogether 
laid aside. The heir of Meer Jafifier still resides at Moor- 
shedabad, the ancient capital of his house ; still bears the title 
of Nabob ; is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness " ; 
and is still suffered to retain a portion of the regal state which 
surrounded his ancestors. A pension of a hundred and sixty 
thousand pounds a year is annually paid to him by the govern- 
ment. His carriage is surrounded by guards and preceded by 
attendants with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are 
exempted from the ordinary authority of the ministers of jus- 
tice. But he has not the smallest share of political power, and 
is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject of the Company. 

It would have been easy for Clive, during his second admin- 
istration in Bengal, to accumulate riches such as no subject 
in Europe possessed. He might, indeed, without subjecting the 
rich inhabitants of the province to any pressure beyond that 
to which their mildest rulers had accustomed them, have 
received presents to the amount of three hundred thousand 
pounds a year. The neighbouring princes would gladly have 
paid any price for his favour. But he appears to have strictly 
adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the guidance 



LORD CLIVE 171 

of others. The Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of 
great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed him to accept a 
large sum of money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive cour- 
teously but peremptorily refused ; and it should be observed 
that he made no merit of his refusal, and that the facts did 
not come to light till after his death. He kept an exact account 
of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing from the 
trade in salt, and of those presents which, according to the 
fashion of the East, it would be churlish to refuse. Out of 
the sum arising from these resources he defrayed the expenses 
of his situation. The surplus he divided among a few attached 
friends who had accompanied him to India. He always boasted, 
and as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that his last 
administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune. 

One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left 
him by will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in specie and 
jewels ; and the rules which had been recently laid down 
extended only to presents from the living, and did not affect 
legacies from the dead. Clive took the money, but not for 
himself. He made the whole over to the Company in trust for 
officers and soldiers invalided in their service. The fund which 
still bears his name owes its origin to this princely donation. 

After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health 
made it necessary for him to return to Europe. At the close 
of January, 1767, he quitted for the last time the country on 
whose destinies he had exercised so mighty an influence. 

His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, 
greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous 
causes were already at work which embittered the remaining 
years of his life and hurried him to an untimely grave. His 
old enemies at the India House were still powerful and active, 
and they had been reinforced by a large band of allies whose 
violence far exceeded their own. The whole crew of pilferers and 
oppressors from whom he had rescued Bengal persecuted him 
with the implacable rancour which belongs to such abject 
natures. Many of them even invested their property in India 



172 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

stock, merely that they might be better able to annoy the man 
whose firmness had set bounds to their rapacity. Lying news- 
papers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him ; and the 
temper of the public mind was then such that these arts, which 
under ordinary circumstances would have been ineffectual 
against truth and merit, produced an extraordinary impression. 

The great events which had taken place in India had called 
into existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom their 
countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These persons had 
generally sprung from families neither ancient nor opulent ; 
they had generally been sent at an early age to the East ; and 
they had there acquired large fortunes, which they had brought 
back to their native land. It was natural that, not having had 
much opportunity of mixing with the best society, they should 
exhibit some of the awkwardness and some of the pomposity 
of upstarts. It was natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, 
they should have acquired some tastes and habits surprising, if 
not disgusting, to persons who never had quitted Europe. It 
was natural that, having enjoyed great consideration in the 
East, they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at 
home ; and as they had money, and had not birth or high 
connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtru- 
sively the single advantage which they possessed. Wherever 
they settled there was a kind of feud between them and the 
old nobility and gentry similar to that which raged in France 
between the farmer-general and the marquess. This enmity to 
the aristocracy long continued to distinguish the servants of 
the Company. More than twenty years after the time of which 
we are now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the 
Jacobins might be reckoned " the East Indians almost to a 
man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance 
does not bear a proportion to their wealth." 

The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. 
Some of them had in the East displayed eminent talents and 
rendered great services to the state ; but at home their talents 
were not shown to advantage, and their services were little 



LORD CLIVE 173 

known. That they had sprung from obscurity ; that they had 
acquired great wealth ; that they exhibited it insolently ; that 
they spent it extravagantly ; that they raised the price of 
everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten 
boroughs ; that their liveries outshone those of dukes ; that 
their coaches were finer than that of the Lord Mayor ; that the 
examples of their large and ill-governed households corrupted 
half the servants in the country ; that some of them, with all 
their magnificence, could not catch the tone of good society, 
but, in spite of the stud and the crowd of menials, of the plate 
and the Dresden china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were 
still low men — these were things which excited, both in the 
class from which they had sprung and in the class into which 
they attempted to force themselves, the bitter aversion which 
is the effect of mingled envy and contempt. But when it was 
also rumoured that the fortune which had enabled its possessor 
to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground, or to carry 
the county against the head of a house as old as Domesday 
Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by depos- 
ing legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to beggary, 
all the higher and better, as well as all the low and evil, parts 
of human nature were stirred against the wretch who had 
obtained by guilt and dishonour the riches which he now lav- 
ished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate 
Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against which 
comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, and of those 
crimes which have thrown the deepest gloom over tragedy — of 
Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the 
Third. A tempest of execration and derision such as can be 
compared only to that outbreak of public feeling against the 
Puritans which took place at the time of the Restoration burst 
on the servants of the Company. The humane man was horror- 
struck at the way in which they had got their money, the 
thrifty man at the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante 
sneered at their want of taste. The Maccaroni blackballed 
them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most unlike in sentiment 



174 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, 
were for once on the same side. It is hardly too much to say 
that, during a space of about thirty years, the whole lighter 
literature of England was coloured by the feelings which we 
have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian 
chief — dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical ; ashamed of the 
humble friends of his youth ; hating the aristocracy, yet child- 
ishly eager to be numbered among them ; squandering his 
wealth on pandars and flatterers ; tricking out his chairmen with 
the most costly hot-house flowers ; and astounding the ignorant 
with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires, Mackenzie, with 
more delicate humour, depicted a plain country family raised 
by the Indian acquisitions of one of its members to sudden 
opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimiciy of the 
manners of the great. Cowper, in that lofty expostulation 
which glows with the very spirit of the Hebrew poets, placed 
the oppression of India foremost in the list of those national 
crimes for which God had punished England with years of 
disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the 
loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers will 
take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circulating 
libraries for some novel published sixty years ago, the chance 
is that the villain or sub-villain of the story will prove to be a 
savage old Nabob with an immense fortune, a tawny com- 
plexion, a bad liver, and a worse heart. 

Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the 
country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was emi- 
nently the Nabob, the ablest, the most celebrated, the highest 
in rank, the highest in fortune, of all the fraternity. His 
wealth was exhibited in a manner which could not fail to 
excite odium. He lived with great magnificence in Berkeley 
Square. He reared one palace in Shropshire and another at 
Claremont. His parliamentary influence might vie with that 
of the greatest families. But in all this splendour and power 
envy found something to sneer at. On some of his relations 
wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awkwardly as on 



LORD CLIVE 175 

Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with 
all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the 
satirists of that age represented as characteristic of his whole 
class. In the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. 
He was constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his 
uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was 
content with the plainest fare. But when he was no longer at 
the head of an army, he laid aside this Spartan temperance 
for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. Though his person 
was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed 
from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and com- 
manding expression, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, 
and replenished his wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John 
Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in 
which Clive orders "two hundred shirts, the best and finest 
that can be got for love or money." A few follies of this 
description, grossly exaggerated by report, produced an unfa- 
vourable impression on the public mind. But this was not the 
worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inven- 
tions, were circulated touching his conduct in the East. He 
had to bear the whole odium, not only of those bad acts to 
which he had once or twice stooped, but of all the bad acts of 
all the English in India ; of bad acts committed when he was 
absent ; nay, of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and 
severely punished. The very abuses against which he had 
waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were laid to his 
account. He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of 
all the vices and weaknesses which the public, with or without 
reason, ascribed to the English adventurers in Asia. We have 
ourselves heard old men who knew nothing of his history, 
but who still retained the prejudices conceived in their youth, 
talk of him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson always held this 
language. Brown, whom Clive employed to lay out his pleasure- 
grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his noble employer 
a chest which had once been filled with gold from the treasury 
of Moorshedabad, and could not understand how the conscience 



176 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of the criminal could suffer him to sleep with such an object 
so near to his bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey looked 
with mysterious horror on the stately house which was rising 
at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had 
ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the 
devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. Among the 
gaping clowns who drank in this frightful story was a worthless 
ugly lad of the name of Hunt, since widely known as William 
Huntington, S.S. ; and the superstition which was strangely 
mingled with the knavery of that remarkable impostor seems 
to have derived no small nutriment from the tales which he 
heard of the life and character of Clive. 

In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given to 
the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter 
and fainter. His policy was to a great extent abandoned ; the 
abuses which he had suppressed began to revive ; and at 
length the evils which a bad government had engendered 
were aggravated by one of those fearful visitations which the 
best government cannot avert. In the summer of 1770, the 
rains failed ; the earth was parched up ; the tanks were empty ; 
the rivers shrank within their beds ; and a famine, such as is 
known only in countries where every household depends for 
support on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the whole 
valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender and del- 
icate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the pub- 
lic gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern 
jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves 
on the earth before the passers-by, and with loud wailings 
implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogly 
every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the por- 
ticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very 
streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the 
dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough 
to bear the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to 
the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and vultures 
which fed on human remains in the face of day. The extent 



LORD CLIVE 177 

of the mortality was never ascertained ; but it was popularly 
reckoned by millions. This melancholy intelligence added to 
the excitement which already prevailed in England on Indian 
subjects. The proprietors of East India stock were uneasy 
about their dividends. All men of common humanity were 
touched by the calamities of our unhappy subjects ; and 
indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It was 
rumoured that the Company's servants had created the famine 
by engrossing all the rice of the country ; that they had sold 
grain for eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had 
bought it ; that one English functionary who, the year before, 
was not worth a hundred guineas, had, during that season of 
misery, remitted sixty thousand pounds to London. These 
charges we believe to have been unfounded. That servants of 
the Company had ventured, since Clive's departure, to deal in 
rice is probable. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have 
gained by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for 
thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil which 
physical causes sufficiently explain. The outcry which was 
raised against them on this occasion was, we suspect, as absurd 
as the imputations which, in times of dearth at home, were 
once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are still thrown by 
two or three old women, on the corn factors. It was, however, 
so loud and so general that it appears to have imposed even 
on an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of 
Adam Smith, What was still more extraordinary, these un- 
happy events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. 
He had been some years in England when the famine took 
place. None of his acts had the smallest tendency to produce 
such a calamity. If the servants of the Company had traded 
in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule 
which he had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely 
enforced. But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we 
have said, the Nabob, the AngloTndian personified ; and, 
while he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held 
responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal. 



1/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Parliament had hitherto bestowed very Httle attention on our 
Eastern possessions. Since the death of George the Second, 
a rapid succession of weak administrations, each of which was 
in turn flattered and betrayed by the Court, had held the sem- 
blance of power. Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital, 
and insurrectionary movements in the American colonies had 
left the advisers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian 
politics. When they did interfere, their interference was feeble 
and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period 
of his ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had 
meditated a bold attack on the Company. But his plans were 
rendered abortive by the strange malady which about that time 
began to overcloud his splendid genius. 

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament 
could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The Government 
was stronger than any which had held power since the breach 
between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in 1761. No 
pressing question of domestic or European policy required the 
attention of public men. There was a short and delusive lull 
between two tempests. The excitement produced by the Mid- 
dlesex election was over ; the discontents of America did not 
yet threaten civil war ; the financial difficulties of the Company 
brought on a crisis ; the Ministers were forced to take up the 
subject ; and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, 
now broke at once on the head of Clive. 

His situation was, indeed, singularly unfortunate. He was 
hated throughout the country ; hated at the India House ; hated, 
above all, by those wealthy and powerful servants of the Com- 
pany, whose rapacity and tyranny he had withstood. He had 
to bear the double odium of his bad and of his good actions, 
of every Indian abuse and of every Indian reform. The state 
of the political world was such that he could count on the sup- 
port of no powerful connection. The party to which he had 
belonged — that of George Grenville — had been hostile to the 
Government, and yet had never cordially united with the other 
sections of the Opposition, with the little band which still 



LORD CLIVE 179 

followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham, or with the large and 
respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the acknowl- 
edged leader, George Grenville was now dead ; his followers 
were scattered ; and Clive, unconnected with any of the power- 
ful factions which divided the Parliament, could reckon only 
on the votes of those members who w^ere returned by himself. 
His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his 
virtues, were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their malev- 
olence aimed at nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame 
and fortune. They wished to see him expelled from Parlia- 
ment, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confis- 
cated ; and it may be doubted whether even such a result as 
this would have quenched their thirst for revenge. 

Clive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics. 
Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with everything at 
stake, he did not even deign to stand on the defensive, but 
pushed boldly forward to the attack. At an early stage of the 
discussions on Indian affairs he rose, and in a long and elab- 
orate speech vindicated himself from a large part of the 
accusations which had been brought against him. He is said 
to have produced a great impression on his audience. Lord 
Chatham, who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt 
the scene of his glory, was that night under the gallery of the 
House of Commons, and declared that he had never heard a 
finer speech. It was subsequently printed under Clive's direc- 
tion, and, when the fullest allowance has been made for the 
assistance which he may have obtained from literary friends, 
proves him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and a 
manly spirit, but talents both for disquisition and declamation 
which assiduous culture might have improved into the highest 
excellence. He confined his defence on this occasion to the 
measures of his last administration, and succeeded so far that 
his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to direct their 
attacks chiefly against the earlier part of his life. 

The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some 
assailable points to their hostility. A committee was chosen 



i8o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

by ballot to inquire into the affairs of India ; and by this com- 
mittee the whole history of that great revolution which threw 
down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with 
malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing 
examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly 
complained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated 
like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his 
replies would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature 
were the frauds to which, in the course of his Eastern nego- 
tiations, he had sometimes descended. He avowed the arts 
which he had employed to deceive Omichund, and resolutely 
said that he was not ashamed of them, and that, in the same 
circumstances, he would again act in the same manner. He 
admitted that he had received immense sums from Meer 
Jaffier ; but he denied that, in doing so, he had violated any 
obligation of morality or honour. He laid claim, on the con- 
trary, and not without some reason, to the praise of eminent 
disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the situation 
in which his victory had placed him : great princes dependent 
on his pleasure ; an opulent city afraid of being given up to 
plunder ; wealthy bankers bidding against each other for his 
smiles ; vaults piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him 
alone. "By God, Mr. Chairman," he exclaimed, "at this 
moment I stand astonished at my own moderation ! "• 

The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it 
had been completed. It was continued in the following session. 
When at length the committee had concluded its labours, 
enlightened and impartial men had little difficulty in making 
up their minds as to the result. It was clear that Clive had 
been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate 
without attacking the authority of all the most sacred laws 
which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of states. 
But it was equally clear that he had displayed great talents, 
and even great virtues ; that he had rendered eminent services 
both to his country and to the people of India ; and that it 
was in truth not for his dealings with Meer Jaffier nor for the 



LORD CLIVE i8i 

fraud which he had practised on Omichund, but for his deter- 
mined resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was now 
called in question. 

Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The 
greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the 
slightest transgression. If a man has sold beer on a Sunday 
morning, it is no defence that he has saved the life of a fellow- 
creature at the risk of his own. If he has harnessed a New- 
foundland dog to his little child's carriage, it is no defence that 
he was wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this way that 
we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary 
restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are 
entitled to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such 
men should be judged by their contemporaries as they will be 
judged by posterity. Their bad actions ought not, indeed, to 
be called good ; but their good and bad actions ought to be 
fairly weighed ; and if on the whole the good preponderate, 
the sentence ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of 
approbation. Not a single great ruler in history can be absolved 
by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two unjusti- 
fiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice the 
deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Holland, his 
great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray the good 
regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry the Fourth of 
France, Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best of 
them pass such a scrutiny.? History takes wider views; and 
the best tribunal for great political cases is the tribunal which 
anticipates the verdict of history. 

Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in 
Clive's case. They could not pronounce him blameless ; but 
they were not disposed to abandon him to that low-minded 
and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to 
worry him to death. Lord North, though not very friendly 
to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him. 
While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, who had some 
years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed 



1 82 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

with great pomp in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. He was soon 
after appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire. When he 
kissed hands, George the Third, who had ahvays been partial 
to him, admitted him to a private audience, talked to him half 
an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly affected when the 
persecuted general spoke of his services and of the way in 
which they had been requited. 

At length the charges came in a definite form before the 
House of Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, 
a man of wit, fashion, and honour, an agreeable dramatic writer, 
an officer whose courage was never questioned and whose skill 
was at that time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. 
The members of the administration took different sides ; for 
in that age all questions were open questions, except such as 
were brought forward by the Government, or such as implied 
some censure on the Government. Thurlow, the Attorney- 
General, was among the assailants. Wedderburn, the Solicitor- 
General, strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with 
extraordinary force of argument and language. It is a curious 
circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow was the most 
conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburn 
was among the most unrelenting persecutors of that great 
though not faultless statesman. Clive spoke in his own defence 
at less length and with less art than in the preceding year, but 
with much energy and pathos. He recounted his great actions 
and his wrongs ; and, after bidding his hearers remember that 
they were about to decide not only on his honour but on their 
own, he retired from the House. 

The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the arms 
of the State belong to the State alone, and that it is illegal in 
the servants of the State to appropriate such acquisitions to 
themselves. They resolved that this wholesome rule appeared to 
have been systematically violated by the English functionaries 
in Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step further, 
and resolved that Clive had, by means of the power which he 
possessed as commander of the British forces in India, obtained 



LORD CLIVE 183 

large sums from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. 
They had voted the major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism, 
but they shrank from drawing the logical conclusion. When it 
was moved that Lord Clive had abused his powers, and set an 
evil example to the servants of the public, the previous question 
was put and carried. At length, long after the sun had risen 
on an animated debate, Wedderburn moved that Lord Clive 
had at the same time rendered great and meritorious services 
to his country ; and this motion passed without a division. 

The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the 
whole, honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment 
of the Commons. They had, indeed, no great temptation to 
do wrong. They would have been very bad judges of an 
accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But 
the question respecting Clive was not a party question ; and 
the House accordingly acted with the good sense and good 
feeling which may always be expected from an assembly of 
English gentlemen not blinded by faction. 

The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British 
Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. 
The wretched government of Louis the Fifteenth had mur- 
dered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had 
served his country with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais 
was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it 
only to die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and 
broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in ante-chambers, 
sank into an obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common 
place of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons 
of England, on the other hand, treated their living captain 
with that discriminating justice which is seldom shown except 
to the dead. They laid down sound general principles ; they 
delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those prin- 
ciples ; and they tempered the gentle censure with liberal 
eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always partial to Eng- 
land, and always eager to expose the abuses of the Parliaments 
of France. Indeed, he seems at this time to have meditated 



1 84 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design 
to Dr. Moore when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. 
Wedderburn took great interest in the matter, and pressed 
Chve to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into 
execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced 
a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, 
many just and humane sentiments poignantly expressed, many 
grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, 
much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sub- 
lime theophilanthropy, stolen from the New Testament and 
put into the mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins. 

Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and 
his honours. He" was surrounded by attached friends and 
relations, and he had not yet passed the season of vigorous 
bodily and mental exertion. But clouds had long been gather- 
ing over his mind, and now settled on it in thick darkness. 
From early youth he had been subject to fits of that strange 
melancholy "' which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it 
can find the grave." While still a writer at Madras, he had 
twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and prosperity 
had produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In India, while 
he was occupied by great affairs, in England, while wealth and 
rank had still the charm of novelty, he had borne up against 
his constitutional misery. But he had now nothing to do and 
nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation 
drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The 
malignity with which his enemies had pursued him, the in- 
dignity with which he had been treated by the committee, the 
censure (lenient as it was) which the House of Commons had 
pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a large 
portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all 
concurred to irritate and depress him. In the meantime, his 
temper was tried by acute physical suffering. During his long 
residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several pain- 
ful distempers. In order to obtain ease he called in the help 
of opium ; and he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous 



LORD CLIVE 185 

ally. To the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed 
through the gloom. It was said that he would sometimes, 
after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the 
discussion of some great question, would display in full vigour 
all the talents of the soldier and the statesman, and would 
then sink back into his melancholy repose. 

The disputes with America had now become so serious that 
an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable, and the Ministers 
were desirous to avail themselves of the services of Clive. 
Had he still been what he was when he raised the siege of 
Patna and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth 
of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the 
colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable 
separation would have been deferred for a few years. But it 
was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many 
kinds of suffering. On the twenty-second of November, 1774, 
he died by his own hand. He had just completed his forty- 
ninth year. 

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the 
vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices ; and 
some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims 
both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe the 
mournful event to the just vengeance of God and to the 
horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings 
that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by 
the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by 
fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies. 

Clive committed great faults and we have not attempted 
to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his 
merits, and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not 
appear to us to deprive him of his right to an honourable 
place in the estimation of posterity. 

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the 
English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen 
were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered 
as a people formed for victory and command. His courage 



1 86 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and capacity dissolved the charm. With the defence of Arcot 
commences that long series of Oriental triumphs which closes 
with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we forget that he was only 
twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for 
military command. This is a rare if not a singular distinction. 
It is true that Alexander, Cond6, and Charles the Twelfth 
won great battles at a still earlier age ; but those princes were 
surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose 
suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of 
Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet 
more experience than any of those who served under him. 
He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his 
army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an 
equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war was 
Napoleon Bonaparte. 

From Clive's second visit to India dates the political 
ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and 
resolution realized, in the course of a few months, more than 
all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagina- 
tion of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such 
an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never 
added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful pro- 
consul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under 
arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the 
crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame 
of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim 
when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the 
young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army 
not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman legion. 

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the 
administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed in 
Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which 
Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the 
shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing 
war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and 
corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, 



LORD CLIVE 187 

his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice 
which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his 
earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly 
repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants 
has been taken away ; if in India the yoke of foreign masters, 
elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter 
than that of any native dynasty ; if to that gang of public 
robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain 
of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more 
highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, 
disinterestedness, and public spirit ; if we now see such men 
as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious 
armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of 
their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to 
every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is 
in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on 
the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list — in the 
list of those who have done and suffered much for the happi- 
ness of mankind. To the warrior history will assign a place 
in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she 
deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with which 
France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the 
latest generations of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of 
Lord William Bentinck. 



WARREN HASTINGS 

On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, 
it is impossible to deny that, against the great crimes by which 
it is blemished, we have to set off great public services. 
England had passed through a perilous crisis. She still, in- 
deed, maintained her place in the foremost rank of European 
powers ; and the manner in which she had defended herself 
against fearful odds had inspired surrounding nations with a 
high opinion both -of her spirit and of her strength. Never- 
theless, in every part of the world except one she had been 
a loser. Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge 
the independence of thirteen colonies peopled by her children, 
and to conciliate the Irish by giving up the right of legislating 
for them ; but, in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, 
on the coast of Africa, on the continent of America, she had 
been compelled to cede the fruits of her victories in former 
wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida ; France regained 
Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only 
quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was 
the quarter in which her interests had been committed to the 
care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost exertions both of 
European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in 
the East had been greatly augmented. Benares was sub- 
jected ; the Nabob Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our 
influence had been thus extended — nay, that Fort William and 
Fort St. George had not been occupied by hostile armies — 
was owing, if we may trust the general voice of the English 
in India, to the skill and resolution of Hastings. 

His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him 
a title to be considered as one of the most remarkable men 
in our history. He dissolved the double government. He 
transferred the direction of affairs to English hands. Out of 



WARREN HASTINGS 189 

a frightful anarchy he educed at least a rude and imperfect 
order. The whole organization by which justice was dispensed, 
revenue collected, peace maintained throughout a territory not 
inferior in population to the dominions of Louis the Sixteenth 
or of the Emperor Joseph, was formed and superintended by 
him. He boasted that every public office, without exception, 
which existed when he left Bengal was his creation. It is quite 
true that this system, after all the improvements suggested by 
the experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and 
that it was at first far more defective than it now is. But 
whoever seriously considers what it is to construct from the 
beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as 
a government will allow that what Hastings effected deserves 
high admiration. To compare the most celebrated European 
ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to 
compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, 
who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his 
plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his 
sickle and his flail, his mill and his oven. 

The just fame of Hastings rises still higher, when we re- 
flect that he was not bred a statesman ; that he was sent from 
school to a counting-house ; and that he was employed during 
the prime of his manhood as a commercial agent, far from all 
intellectual society. 

Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when 
placed at the head of affairs, he could apply for assistance 
were persons who owed as little as himself, or less than him- 
self, to education. A minister in Europe finds himself, on the 
first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded 
by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official tra- 
ditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his 
own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street 
and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, 
he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself, and 
then to form his instruments ; and this not in a single depart- 
ment, but in all the departments of the administration. 



I90 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous 
task, he was constantly trammelled by orders from home, and 
frequently borne down by a majority in Council. The preser- 
vation of an Empire from a formidable combination of foreign 
enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, 
were accomplished by him while every ship brought out bales 
of censure from his employers, and while the records of every 
consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his col- 
leagues. We believe that there never was a public man whose 
temper was so severely tried ; not Marlborough, when thwarted 
by the Dutch Deputies ; not Wellington, when he had to deal 
at once with the Portuguese Regency, the Spanish Juntas, and 
Mr. Percival. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost 
any trial. It was not sweet, but it was calm. Quick and 
vigorous as his intellect was, the patience with which he 
endured the most cruel vexations till a remedy could be found 
resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been 
capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring ; yet his resent- 
ment so seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be 
doubted whether what appeared to be revenge was anything 
but policy. 

The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always 
had the full command of all the resources of one of the most 
fertile minds that ever existed. Accordingly, no complication 
of perils and embarrassments could perplex him. For every 
difficulty he had a contrivance ready ; and, whatever may be 
thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contriv- 
ances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose 
for which they were designed. 

Together with this extraordinary talent for devising ex- 
pedients, Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, another 
talent scarcely less necessary to a man in his situation ; we 
mean the talent for conducting political controversy. It is as 
necessary to an English statesman in the East that he should 
be able to write, as it is to a minister in this country that he 
should be able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a 



WARREN HASTINGS 191 

public man here that the nation judges of his powers. It is 
from the letters and reports of a public man in India that the 
dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In each 
case, the talent which receives peculiar encouragement is 
developed, perhaps at the expense of the other powers. In 
this country, we sometimes hear men speak above their abilities. 
It is not very unusual to find gentlemen in the Indian service 
who write above their abilities. The English politician is a 
little too much of a debater ; the Indian politician a little too 
much of an essayist. 

Of the numerous servants of the Company who have dis- 
tinguished themselves as framers of minutes and despatches, 
Hastings stands at the head. He was, indeed, the person who 
gave to the official writing of the Indian governments the 
character which it still retains. He was matched against no 
common antagonist. But even Francis was forced to acknowl- 
edge, with sullen and resentful candour, that there was no 
contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the 
Governor-General's power of making out a case, of perplexing 
what it was inconvenient that people should understand, and 
of setting in the clearest point of view whatever would bear 
the light, was incomparable. His style must be praised 
with some reservation. It was, in general, forcible, pure, and 
polished ; but it was sometimes, though not often, turgid, 
and on one or two occasions even bombastic. Perhaps the 
fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended 
to corrupt his taste. 

And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would 
be most unjust not to praise the judicious encouragement 
which, as a ruler, he gave to liberal studies and curious re- 
searches. His patronage was extended, with prudent generosity, 
to voyages, travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it 
is true, towards introducing into India the learning of the West, 
To make the young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton 
and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, 
and surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical 



192 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

superstition, or for the imperfect science of ancient Greece trans- 
fused through Arabian expositions — this was a scheme reserved 
to crown the beneficent administration of a far more virtuous 
ruler. Still, it is impossible to refuse high commendation to a 
man who, taken from a ledger to govern an empire, overwhelmed 
by public business, surrounded by people as busy as himself, 
and separated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary 
society, gave, both by his example and by his munificence, a 
great impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he 
was deeply skilled. With the Sanscrit he was not himself 
acquainted ; but those who first brought that language to the 
knowledge of European students owed much to his encourage- 
ment. It was under his protection that the Asiatic Society 
commenced its honourable career. That distinguished body 
selected him to be its first president ; but, with excellent taste 
and feeling, he declined the honour in favour of Sir William 
Jones. But the chief advantage which the students of Oriental 
letters derived from his patronage remains to be mentioned. 
The Pundits of Bengal had always looked with great jealousy 
on the attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries which 
were locked up in the sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion 
had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the Hindoos 
knew of the spirit of the Portuguese Government might warrant 
them in apprehending persecution from Christians, That ap- 
prehension the wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. 
He was the first foreign ruler w^ho succeeded in gaining the 
confidence of the hereditary priests of India, and who induced 
them to lay open to English scholars the secrets of the old 
Brahminical theology and jurisprudence. 

It is, indeed, impossible to deny that, in the great art of 
inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and 
attachment no ruler ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made 
himself popular with the English by giving up the Bengalese 
to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had 
conciliated the Bengalese and alienated the English, there 
would have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to 



WARREN HASTINGS 193 

him is that, being the chief of a small band of strangers who 
exercised boundless power over a great indigenous population, 
he made himself beloved both by the subject many and by the 
dominant few. The affection felt for him by the civil service 
was singularly ardent and constant. Through all his disasters 
and perils, his brethren stood by him with steadfast loyalty. 
The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have seldom 
loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory. 
Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, he could 
always count on the support of the military profession. While 
such was his empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he 
enjoyed among the natives a popularity, such as other governors 
have perhaps better merited, but such as no other governor has 
been able to attain. He spoke their vernacular dialects with 
facility and precision. He was intimately acquainted with their 
feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for great ends, 
he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion ; but on such 
occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their 
love. In general, he carefully avoided all that could shock 
their national or religious prejudices. His administration was, 
indeed, in many respects faulty ; but the Bengalee standard of 
good government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the 
hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the 
rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a 
conflict with the mighty children of the sea ; and the immense 
rice harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in 
under the protection of the English sword. The first English 
conquerors had been more rapacious and merciless even than 
the Mahrattas ; but that generation had passed away. Defective 
as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is 
probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a 
season of equal security and prosperity. For the first time 
within living memory, the province was placed under a govern- 
ment strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not 
inclined to play the robber itself. These things inspired good- 
will. At the same time, the constant success of Hastings and 



194 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the manner in which he extricated himself from every difficulty 
made him an object of superstitious admiration ; and the more 
than regal splendour which he sometimes displayed dazzled 
a people who have much in common with children. Even 
now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of 
India still talk of him as the greatest of the English ; and 
nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad about the 
fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren 
Hostein. 

The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not 
affect his popularity with the people of Bengal ; for those 
offences were committed against neighbouring states. Those 
offences, as our readers must have perceived, we are not dis- 
posed to vindicate ; yet, in order that the censure may be justly 
apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that .the motive of 
the criminal should be taken into consideration. The motive 
which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected 
and ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the senti- 
ments of humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his 
view as nothing when opposed to the immediate interest of 
the State. This is no justification, according to the principles 
either of morality, or of what we believe to be identical with 
morality — namely, far-sighted policy. Nevertheless the common 
sense of mankind, which in questions of this sort seldom goes 
far wrong, will always recognize a distinction between crimes 
which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, 
and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit 
of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we 
conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revo- 
lution of Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude 
added a rupee to his fortune. We will not affirm that in all 
pecuniary dealings he showed that punctilious integrity, that 
dread of the faintest appearance of evil, which is now the glory 
of the Indian civil service. But when the school in which he 
had been trained and the temptations to which he was exposed 
are considered, we are more inclined to praise him for his 



WARREN HASTINGS 195 

general uprightness with respect to money than rigidly to blame 
him for a few transactions which would now be called indeli- 
cate and irregular, but which even now would hardly be desig- 
nated as corrupt. A rapacious man he certainly was not. Had 
he been so, he would infallibly have returned to his country 
the richest subject in Europe. We speak within compass when 
we say that, without applying any extraordinary pressure, he 
might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Com- 
pany's provinces and from neighbouring princes, in the course 
of thirteen years, more than three millions sterling, and might 
have outshone the splendour of Carlton House and of the 
Palais Royal. He brought home a fortune such as a Gov- 
ernor-General, fond of state and careless of thrift, might easily, 
during so long a tenure of office, save out of his legal salary. 
Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was gen- 
erally believed that she accepted presents with great alacrity, 
and that she thus formed, without the connivance of her hus- 
band, a private hoard amounting to several lacs of rupees. 
We are the more inclined to give credit to this story because 
Mr. Glcig, who cannot but have heard it, does not, as far as 
we have observed, notice or contradict it. 

The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was, indeed, 
such that she might easily have obtained much larger sums 
than she was ever accused of receiving. At length her health 
began to give way ; and the Governor-General, much against 
his will, was compelled to send her to England, He seems 
to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to men 
of strong minds, to men whose affection is not easily won or 
widely diffused. The talk of Calcutta ran for some time on 
the luxurious manner in which he fitted up the round-house 
of an Indiaman for her accommodation, on the profusion of 
sandal-wood and carved ivory which adorned her cabin, and on 
the thousands of rupees which had been expended in order to 
procure for her the society of an agreeable female companion 
during the voyage. We may remark here that the letters of 
Hastings to his wife are exceedingly characteristic. They are 



196 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

tender, and full of indications of esteem and confidence ; but, 
at the same time, a little more ceremonious than is usual in so 
intimate a relation. The solemn courtesy with which he com- 
pliments "his elegant Marian" reminds us now and then of 
the dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison bowed over 
Miss Byron's hand in the cedar parlour. 

After some months, Hastings prepared to follow his wife 
to England. When it was announced that he was about to 
quit his office, the feeling of the society which he had so long 
governed manifested itself by many signs. Addresses poured 
in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil functionaries, sol- 
diers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered up the 
keys of office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane 
to the quay where he embarked. Several barges escorted him 
far down the river ; and some attached friends refused to quit 
him till the low coast of Bengal was fading from the view, 
and till the pilot was leaving the ship. 

Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused him- 
self with books and with his pen, and that among the com- 
positions by which he beguiled the tediousness of that long 
leisure was a pleasing imitation of Horace's Otiwn Divos 
rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore, afterwards 
Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and 
honour it is impossible to speak too highly, but who, like some 
other excellent members of the civil service, extended to the 
conduct of his friend Hastings an indulgence of which his 
own conduct never stood in need. 

The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings 
was little more than four months on the sea. In June, 1785, 
he landed at Plymouth, posted to London, appeared at Court, 
paid his respects in Leadenhall Street, and then retired with 
his wife to Cheltenham. 

He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King 
treated him with marked distinction. The Queen, who had 
already incurred much censure on account of the favour which, 
in spite of the ordinary severity of her virtue, she had shown 



WARREN HASTINGS 197 

to the "elegant Marian," was not less gracious to Hastings. 
The Directors received him in a solemn sitting ; and their 
chairman read to him a vote of thanks which they had passed 
without one dissentient voice. " I find myself," said Hastings, 
in a letter written about a quarter of a year after his arrival in 
England — "I find myself everywhere, and universally, treated 
with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I 
possess the good opinion of my country." 

The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence 
about this time is the more remarkable because he had al- 
ready received ample notice of the attack which was in prep- 
paration. Within a week after he landed at Plymouth, Burke 
gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion seriously 
affecting a gentleman lately returned from India. The Session, 
however, was then so far advanced that it was impossible to 
enter on so extensive and important a subject. 

Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his 
position. Indeed, that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness 
in devising expedients, which had distinguished him in the 
East seemed now to have forsaken him ; not that his abilities 
were at all impaired ; not that he was not still the same man 
who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had 
made the Chief Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who 
had deposed Cheyte Sing and repelled Hyder Ali. But an 
oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at 
fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns 
to it after thirty or forty years passed in India, will find, be 
his talents what- they may, that he has much both to learn 
and to unlearn before he can take a place among English 
statesmen. The working of a representative system, the war 
of parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the press, are 
startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new 
machines and new tactics, he is as much bewildered as 
Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at 
Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigour 
causes him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when 



198 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

applied to the state of society to which he is accustomed, the 
more certain they are to lead him astray. This was strikingly 
the case with Hastings. In India he had a bad hand ; but he 
was master of the game, and he won every stake. In England 
he held excellent cards, if he had known how to play them ; 
and it was chiefly by his own errors that he was brought to 
the verge of ruin. 

Of all his errors the most serious was, perhaps, the choice of 
a champion. Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a 
singularly happy selection. He put himself into the hands of 
Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, one of the few 
great advocates who have also been great in the House of 
Commons. To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was 
wanting — neither learning nor knowledge of the world, neither 
forensic acuteness nor that eloquence which charms political 
assemblies. Hastings intrusted his interests to a very different 
person, a Major in the Bengal army, named Scott. This 
gentleman had been sent over from India some time before 
as the agent of the Governor-General. It was rumoured that 
his services were rewarded with Oriental munificence ; and we 
believe that he received much more than Hastings could con- 
veniently spare. The Major obtained a seat in Parliament, 
and was there regarded as the organ of his employer. It was 
evidently impossible that a gentleman so situated could .speak 
with the authority which belongs to an independent position. 
Nor had the agent of Hastings the talents necessary for 
obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed to listen 
to great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He was 
always on his legs ; he was very tedious ; and he had only 
one topic, the merits and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody 
who knows the House of Commons will easily guess what 
followed. The Major was soon considered as the greatest 
bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to Parlia- 
ment. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did 
not contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or 
Bengalcusis, but known to be written by the indefatigable 



WARREN HASTINGS 199 

Scott ; and hardly a month in which some bulky pamphlet on 
the same subject, and from the same pen, did not pass to the 
trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's 
capacity for conducting a delicate question through Parliament, 
our readers will want no evidence beyond that which they will 
find in letters preserved in these volumes. We will give a 
single specimen of his temper and judgment. He designated 
the greatest man then living as "that reptile Mr. Burke." 

In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general 
aspect of affairs was favourable to Hastings. The King was 
on his side. The Company and its servants were zealous in 
his cause. Among public men he had many ardent friends. 
Such were Lord Mansfield, who had outlived the vigour of 
his body, but not that of his mind ; and Lord Lansdowne, 
who, though unconnected with any party, retained the impor- 
tance which belongs to great talents and knowledge. The 
ministers were generally believed to be favourable to the late 
Governor-General. They owed their power to the clamour 
which had been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill. 
The authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested 
rights, and of setting up powers unknown to the constitution, 
had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hast- 
ings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified 
extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, 
had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally 
be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the 
plea for administering so violent a remedy ; and such, in fact, 
was their general disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, 
in particular, whose great place and force of intellect gave him 
a weight in the Government inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt, 
espoused the cause of Hastings with indecorous violence. 
Mr. Pitt, though he had censured many parts of the Indian 
system, had studiously abstained from saying a word against 
the late chief of the Indian Government. To Major Scott, 
indeed, the young minister had in private extolled Hastings 
as a great, a wonderful man, who had the highest claims on 



200 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the Government. There was only one objection to granting 
all that so eminent a servant of the public could ask. The 
resolution of censure still remained on the journals of the 
House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust ; 
but, till it was rescinded, could the minister advise the King 
to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured ? 
If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was 
the only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown 
from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. 
Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the adminis- 
tration who was deeply committed to a different view of the 
subject. He had moved the resolution which created the 
difficulty ; but even from him little was to be apprehended. 
Since he had presided over the committee on Eastern affairs, 
great changes had taken place. He was surrounded by new 
allies ; he had fixed his hopes on new objects ; and whatever 
may have been his good qualities — and he had many — 
flattery itself never reckoned rigid consistency in the number. 
From the Ministry, therefore, Hastings had every reason 
to expect support ; and the Ministry was very powerful. The 
Opposition was loud and vehement against him. But the 
Opposition, though formidable from the wealth and influence 
of some of its members, and from the admirable talents and 
eloquence of others, was outnumbered in Parliament,- and 
odious throughout the country. Nor, as far as we can judge, 
was the Opposition generally desirous to engage in so serious 
an undertaking as the impeachment of an Indian Governor. 
Such an impeachment must last for years. It must impose on 
the chiefs of the party an immense load of labour. Yet it 
could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the great 
political game. The followers of the coalition were therefore 
more inclined to revile Hastings than to prosecute him. They 
lost no opportunity of coupling his name with the names of 
the most hateful tyrants of whom history makes mention. 
The wits of Brooks's aimed their keenest sarcasms both at 
his public and at his domestic life. Some fine diamonds 



WARREN HASTINGS 2oi 

which he had presented, as it was rumoured, to the royal 
family, and a certain richly carved ivory bed which the Queen 
had done him the honour to accept from him, were favourite 
subjects of ridicule. One lively poet proposed that the great 
acts of the fair Marian's present husband should be immortal- 
ized by the pencil of his predecessor ; and that Imhoff should 
be employed to embellish the House of Commons with paint- 
ings of the bleeding Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of 
Cheyte Sing letting himself down to the Ganges. Another, 
in an exquisitely humorous parody of Virgil's third eclogue, 
propounded the question what that mineral could be of 
which the rays had power to make the most austere of prin- 
cesses the friend of a wanton. A third described, with gay 
malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs, Hastings at 
St. James's — the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, 
which adorned her head-dress, her necklace gleaming with future 
votes, and the depending questions that shone upon her ears. 
Satirical attacks of this description, and perhaps a motion for 
a vote of censure, would have satisfied the great body of the 
Opposition. But there were two men whose indignation was 
not to be so appeased — Philip Francis and Edmund Burke. 

Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and 
had already established a character there for industry and abil- 
ity. He laboured, indeed, under one most unfortunate defect, 
want of fluency. But he occasionally expressed himself with 
a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before 
he had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter 
dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as much as- 
perity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of 
years nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which 
Francis had brought back from the East. After his usual 
fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as 
preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, 
and paraded it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical ostentation. 

The zeal of Burke was still fiercer ; but it was far purer. 
Men unable to understand the elevation of his mind have tried 



202 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to find out some discreditable motive for the vehemence and 
pertinacity which he showed on this occasion. But they have 
altogether failed. The idle story that he had some private 
slight to revenge has long been given up, even by the advo- 
cates of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that Burke was actu- 
ated by party spirit, that he retained a bitter remembrance of 
the fall of the coalition, that he attributed that fall to the ex- 
ertions of the East India interest, and that he considered 
Hastings as the head and the representative of that interest. 
This explanation seems to be sufficiently refuted by a reference 
to dates. The hostility of Burke to Hastings commenced long 
before the coalition, and lasted long after Burke had become 
a strenuous supporter of those by whom the coalition had 
been defeated. It began when Burke and Fox, closely allied 
together, were attacking the influence of the Crown, and call- 
ing for peace with the American republic. It continued till 
Burke, alienated from Fox, and loaded with the favours of 
the Crown, died, preaching a cmsade against the French 
republic. We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784 
an enmity which began in 1781, and which retained undi- 
minished force long after persons far more deeply implicated 
than Hastings in the events of 1784 had been cordially for- 
given. And why should we look for any other explanation of 
Burke's conduct than that which we find on the surface } The 
plain truth is that Hastings had committed some great crimes, 
and that the thought of those crimes made the blood of Burke 
boil in his veins. For Burke was a man in whom compassion 
for suffering, and hatred of injustice and tyrann}^, were as 
strong as in Las Casas or Clarkson. And although in him, 
as in Las Casas and in Clarkson, these noble feelings were 
alloyed with the infirmity which belongs to human nature, he 
is, like them, entitled to this great praise, that he devoted 
years of intense labour to the service of a people with whom 
he had neither blood nor language, neither religion nor man- 
ners, in common, and from whom no requital, no thanks, no 
applause could be expected. 



WARREN HASTINGS 203 

His knowledge of India was such as few, even of those 
Europeans who have passed many years in that country, have 
attained, and such as certainly was never attained by any pub- 
lic man who had not quitted Europe. He had studied the 
history, the laws, and the usages of the East with an industry 
such as is seldom found united to so much genius and so much 
sensibility. Others have perhaps been equally laborious, and 
have collected an equal mass of materials. But the manner 
in which Burke brought his higher powers of intellect to work 
on statements of facts an(^ on tables of figures was peculiar 
to himself. In every part of those huge bales of Indian in- 
formation which repelled almost all other readers, his mind, 
at once philosophical and poetical, found something to instruct 
or to delight. His reason analyzed and digested those vast 
and shapeless masses ; his imagination animated and coloured 
them. Out of darkness and dulness and confusion he formed 
a multitude of ingenious theories and vivid pictures. He had, 
in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able 
to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the 
unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to him, as to most 
Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a real country 
and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation 
of the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the 
huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the 
village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's 
hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays 
with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy 
idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, 
with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the 
riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks 
of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and the 
silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of state, the gor- 
geous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble 
lady — all these things were to him as the objects amidst which 
his own life had been passed, as the objects which lay on 
the road between Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All 



204 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

India was present to the eye of his mind — from the hall where 
suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns to 
the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched ; from the 
bazar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and 
sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his 
bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyaenas. He had 
just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of 
Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nun- 
comar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd. Oppression in 
Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the 
streets of London, 

He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some most unjusti- 
fiable acts. All that followed was natural and necessary in a 
mind like Burke's. His imagination and his passions, once 
excited, hurried him beyond the bounds of justice and good 
sense. His reason, powerful as it was, became the slave of 
feelings which it should have controlled. His indignation, 
virtuous in its origin, acquired too much of the character of 
personal aversion. He could see no mitigating circumstance, 
no redeeming merit. His temper, which, though generous and 
affectionate, had always been irritable, had now been made 
almost savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations. Con- 
scious of great powers and great virtues, he found himself, in 
age and poverty, a mark for the hatred of a perfidious Court 
and a deluded people. In Parliament his eloquence was out 
of date, A young generation, which knew him not, had filled 
the House, Whenever he rose to speak, his voice was drowned 
by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in their cradles 
when his orations on the Stamp Act called forth the applause 
of the great Earl of Chatham. These things had produced on 
his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot 
wonder. He could no longer discuss any question with calm- 
ness, or make allowance for honest differences of opinion. 
Those who think that he was more violent and acrimonious 
in debates about India than on other occasions, are ill-informed 
respecting the last years of his life. In the discussions on 



WARREN HASTINGS 205 

the Commercial Treaty with the Court of Versailles, on the 
Regency, on the French Revolution, he showed even more 
virulence than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may 
be remarked that the very persons who called him a mischie- 
vous maniac for condemning in burning words the Rohilla 
war and the spoliation of the Begums exalted him into a 
prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehe- 
mence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the 
Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he 
appears to have been neither a maniac in the former case 
nor a prophet in the latter, but in both cases a great and good 
man, led into extravagance by a sensibility which domineered 
over all his faculties. 

It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis 
or the nobler indignation of Burke would have led their party 
to adopt extreme measures against Hastings if his own con- 
duct had been judicious. He should have felt that, great as 
his public services had been, he was not faultless, and should 
have been content to make his escape without aspiring to the 
honours of a triumph. He and his agent took a different view. 
They were impatient for the rewards which, as they conceived, 
were deferred only till Burke's attack should be over. They 
accordingly resolved to force on a decisive action with an 
enemy for whom, if they had been wise, they would have 
made a bridge of gold. On the first day of the session of 
1786 Major Scott reminded Burke of the notice given in the 
preceding year, and asked whether it was seriously intended 
to bring any charge against the late Governor-General. This 
challenge left no course open to the Opposition except to 
come forward as accusers or to acknowledge themselves calum- 
niators. The administration of Hastings had not been so 
blameless, nor was the great party of Fox and North so feeble, 
that it could be prudent to venture on so bold a defiance. The 
leaders of the Opposition instantly returned the only answer 
which they could with honour return, and the whole party 
was irrevocably pledged to a prosecution. 



2o6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Burke began his operations by applying for Papers. Some 
of the documents for which he asked were refused by the 
ministers, who, in the debate, held language such as strongly 
confirmed the prevailing opinion that they intended to support 
Hastings. In April the charges were laid on the table. They 
had been drawn by Burke with great ability, though in a form 
too much resembling that of a pamphlet. Hastings was fur- 
nished with a copy of the accusation ; and it was intimated to 
him that he might, if he thought fit, be heard in his own 
defence at the bar of the Commons, 

Here again Hastings was pursued by the same fatality which 
had attended him ever since the day when he set foot on 
English ground, it seemed to be decreed that this man, so 
politic and so successful in the East, should commit nothing 
but blunders in Europe. Any judicious adviser would have told 
him that the best thing which he could do would be to make 
an eloquent, forcible, and affecting oration at the bar of the 
House ; but that, if he could not trust himself to speak, and 
found it necessary to read, he ought to be as concise as pos- 
sible. Audiences accustomed to extemporaneous debating of 
the highest excellence are always impatient of long written 
compositions. Hastings, however, sat down as he would have 
done at the Government- House in Bengal and prepared a pa- 
per of immense length. That paper, if recorded on the consul- 
tations of an Indian administration, would have been justly 
praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of place. 
It fell flat, as the best written defence must have fallen flat, 
on an assembly accustomed to the animated and strenuous con- 
flicts of Pitt and Fox. The members, as soon as their curiosity 
about the face and demeanour of so eminent a stranger was 
satisfied, walked away to dinner, and left Hastings to tell his 
story till midnight to the clerks and the Serjeant-at-Arms. 

All preliminary steps having been duly taken, Burke, in the 
beginning of June, brought forward the charge relating to the 
Rohilla war. He acted discreetly in placing this accusation in 
the van ; for Dundas had formerly moved, and the House had 



WARREN HASTINGS 207 

adopted, a resolution condemning in the most severe terms 
the pohcy followed by Hastings with regard to Rohilcund. 
Dundas had little, or rather nothing, to say in defence of his 
own consistency ; but he put a bold face on the matter and 
opposed the motion. Among other things, he declared that, 
though he still thought the Rohilla war unjustifiable, he con- 
sidered the services which Hastings had subsequently rendered 
to the State as sufficient to atone even for so great an offence. 
Pitt did not speak, but voted with Dundas, and Hastings was 
absolved by a hundred and nineteen votes against sixty-seven. 
Hastings was now confident of victory. It seemed, indeed, 
that he had reason to be so. The Rohilla war was, of all his 
measures, that which his accusers might with greatest advan- 
tage assail. It had been condemned by the Court of Directors. 
It had been condemned by the House of Commons. It had 
been condemned by Mr. Dundas, who had since become the 
chief minister of the Crown for Indian affairs. Yet Burke, 
having chosen this strong ground, had been completely defeated 
on it. That, having failed here, he should succeed on any 
point was generally thought impossible. It was rumoured at 
the clubs and coffee-houses that one or perhaps two more 
charges would be brought forward ; that if, on those charges, 
the sense of the House of Commons should be against im- 
peachment, the Opposition would let the matter drop ; that 
Hastings would be immediately raised to the peerage, decorated 
with the star of the Bath, sworn of the Privy Council, and 
invited to lend the assistance of his talents and experience to 
the India Board. Lord Thurlow, indeed, some months before, 
had spoken with contempt of the scruples which prevented Pitt 
from calling Hastings to the House of Lords ; and had even 
said that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was afraid of the 
Commons, there was nothing to prevent the Keeper of the 
Great Seal from taking the royal pleasure about a patent of 
peerage. The very title was chosen. Hastings was to be Lord 
Daylesford. For through all changes of scene and changes of 
fortune remained unchanged his attachment to the spot which 



2o8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

had witnessed the greatness and the fall of his family, and 
which had borne so great a part in the first dreams of his 
young ambition. 

But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. 
On the thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with 
great ability and eloquence, the charge respecting the treat- 
ment of Cheyte Sing. Francis followed on the same side. 
The friends of Hastings were in high spirits when Pitt rose. 
With his usual abundance and felicity of language, the Minister 
gave his opinion on the case. He maintained that the 
Governor-General was justified in calling on the Rajah of 
Benares for pecuniary assistance, and in imposing a fine when 
that assistance was contumaciously withheld. He also thought 
that the conduct of the Governor-General during the insurrec- 
tion had been distinguished by ability and presence of mind. 
He censured, with great bitterness, the conduct of Francis, 
both in India and in Parliament, as most dishonest and 
malignant. The necessary inference from Pitt's arguments 
seemed to be that Hastings ought to be honourably acquitted, 
and both the friends and the opponents of the Minister expected 
from him a declaration to that effect. To the astonishment of 
all parties, he concluded by saying that though he thought it 
right in Hastings to fine Cheyte Sing for contumacy, yet the 
amount of the fine was too great for the occasion. On this 
ground, and on this ground alone, did Mr. Pitt, applauding 
every other part of the conduct of Hastings with regard to 
Benares, declare that he should vote in favour of Mr. Fox's 
motion. 

The House was thunderstruck ; and it well might be so. 
For the wrong done to Cheyte Sing, even had it been as 
flagitious as Fox and Francis contended, was a trifle when 
compared with the horrors which had been inflicted on Rohil- 
cund. But if Mr, Pitt's view of the case of Cheyte Sing were 
correct, there was no ground for an impeachment, or even for 
a vote of censure. If the offence of Hastings was really no 
more than this, that, having a right to impose a mulct, the 



WARREN HASTINGS 209 

amount of which mulct was not defined, but was left to be 
settled by his discretion, he had, not for his own advantage, 
but for that of the State, demanded too much, was this an 
offence which required a criminal proceeding of the highest 
solemnity, a criminal proceeding, to which, during sixty years, 
no public functionary had been subjected ? We can see, we 
think, in what way a man of sense and integrity might have 
been induced to take any course respecting Hastings except 
the course which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man might have 
thought a great example necessary for the preventing of in- 
justice and for the vindicating of the national honour, and 
might, on that ground, have voted for impeachment both on 
the Rohilla charge and on the Benares charge. Such a man 
might have thought that the offences of Hastings had been 
atoned for by great services, and might, on that ground, have 
voted against the impeachment, on both charges. With great 
diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most correct 
course would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the 
Rohilla charge and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had the 
Benares charge appeared to us in the same light in which it 
appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without hesitation, have voted 
for acquittal on that charge. The one course which it is 
inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's abili- 
ties can have honestly taken was the course which he took. 
He acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened 
down the Benares charge till it became no charge at all ; and 
then he pronounced that it contained matter for impeachment. 
Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned 
by the ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the 
Rohilla war was this, that the delinquencies of the early part 
of his administration had been atoned for by the excellence of 
the later part. Was it not most extraordinary that men who 
had held this language could after\vards vote that the later part 
of his administration furnished matter for no less than twenty 
articles of impeachment .-' They first represented the conduct 
of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, 



2IO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

like works of supererogation in the Catholic theology, it ought 
to be efficacious for the cancelling of former offences ; and 
they then prosecuted him for his conduct in 1780 and 1781. 

The general astonishment was the greater, because, only 
twenty-four hours before, the members on whom the minister 
could depend had received the usual notes from the Treasury 
begging them to be in their places and to vote against Mr. 
Fox's motion. It was asserted by Mr. Hastings that, early on 
the morning of the very day on which the debate took place, 
Dundas called on Pitt, woke him, and was closeted with him 
many hours. The result of this conference was a determination 
to give up the late Governor-General to the vengeance of the 
Opposition. It was impossible even for the most powerful 
minister to carry all his followers with him in so strange a 
course. Several persons high in office, the Attorney-General, 
Mr. Grenville, and Lord Mulgrave, divided against Mr. Pitt. 
But the devoted adherents who stood by the head of the 
Government without asking questions were sufficiently numer- 
ous to turn the scale. A hundred and nineteen members voted 
for Mr. Fox's motion, seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently 
followed Pitt. 

That good and great man, the late William Wilberforce, 
often related the events of this remarkable night. He described 
the amazement of the House and the bitter reflections which 
were muttered against the Prime Minister by some of the 
habitual supporters of Government. Pitt himself appeared to 
feel that his conduct required some explanation. He left the 
treasury bench, sat for some time next to Mr. Wilberforce, and 
very earnestly declared that he had found it impossible, as a 
man of conscience, to stand any longer by Hastings. The 
business, he said, was too bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are bound 
to add, fully believed that his friend was sincere, and that the 
suspicions to which this mysterious affair gave rise were 
altogether unfounded. 

Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful to 
mention. The friends of Hastings, most of whom, it is to be 



WARREN HASTINGS 2ii 

observed, generally supported the administration, affirmed that 
the motive of Pitt and Dundas was jealousy. Hastings was 
personally a favourite with the King. He was the idol of the 
East India Company and of its servants. If he were absolved 
by the Commons, seated among the Lords, admitted to the 
Board of Control, closely allied with the strong-minded and 
imperious Thurlow, was it not almost certain that he would 
soon draw to himself the entire management of Eastern affairs .? 
Was it not possible that he might become a formidable rival 
in the Cabinet ? It had probably got abroad that very singular 
communications had taken place between Thurlow and Major 
Scott ; and that if the First Lord of the Treasury was afraid 
to recommend Hastings for a peerage, the Chancellor was 
ready to take the responsibility of that step on himself. Of 
all ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with patience 
to such an encroachment on his functions. If the Commons 
impeached Hastings, all danger was at an end. The proceed- 
ing, however it might terminate, would probably last some 
years. In the meantime, the accused person would be excluded 
from honours and public employments, and could scarcely 
venture even to pay his duty at Court. Such were the 
motives attributed by a great part of the public to the young 
minister, whose ruling passion was generally believed to be 
avarice of power. 

The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions respecting 
Hastings. In the following year, those discussions were 
resumed. The charge touching the spoliation of the Begums 
was brought forward by Sheridan in a speech which was so 
imperfectly reported that it may be said to be wholly lost, but 
which was, without doubt, the most elaborately brilliant of all 
the productions of his ingenious mind. The impression which 
it produced was such as has never been equalled. He sat down, 
not merely amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of 
hands, in which the Lords below the bar and the strangers in 
the gallery joined. The excitement of the House was such that 
no other speaker could obtain a hearing, and the debate was 



212 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

adjourned. The ferment spread fast through the town. Within 
four and twenty hours, Sheridan was offered a thousand pounds 
for the copyright of the speech, if he would himself correct it 
for the press. The impression made by this remarkable display 
of eloquence on severe and experienced critics, whose discern- 
ment may be supposed to have been quickened by emulation, 
was deep and permanent. Mr. Windham, twenty years later, 
said that the speech deserved all its fame, and was, in spite 
of some faults of taste, such as were seldom wanting either in 
the literary or in the parliamentary performances of Sheridan, 
the finest that had been delivered within the memory of man. 
Mr. Fox, about the same time, being asked by the late Lord 
Holland what was the best speech ever made in the House of 
Commons, assigned the first place, without hesitation, to the 
great oration of Sheridan on the Oude charge. 

When the debate was resumedj the tide ran so strongly 
against the accused that his friends were coughed and scraped 
down. Pitt declared himself for Sheridan's motion ; and the 
question was carried by a hundred and seventy-five votes 
against sixty-eight. 

The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly supported 
by the public sympathy, proceeded to bring forward a succes- 
sion of charges relating chiefly to pecuniary transactions. The 
friends of Hastings were discouraged, and, having now no 
hope of being able to avert an impeachment, were not very 
strenuous in their exertions. At length the House, having 
agreed to twenty articles of charge, directed Burke to go 
before the Lords, and to impeach the late Governor-General 
of High Crimes and Misdemeanours. Hastings was at the 
same time arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms, and carried to the 
bar of the Peers. 

The session was now within ten days of its close. It was, 
therefore, impossible that any progress could be made in the 
trial till the next year. Hastings was admitted to bail ; and 
further proceedings were postponed till the Houses should 
reassemble. 



WARREN HASTINGS 213 

When Parliament met in the following winter, the Com- 
mons proceeded to elect a Committee for managing the 
impeachment. Burke stood at the head ; and with him were 
associated most of the leading members of the Opposition. 
But when the name of Francis was read a fierce contention 
arose. It was said that Francis and Hastings were notoriously 
on bad terms ; that they had been at feud during many years ; 
that on one occasion their mutual aversion had impelled them 
to seek each other's lives ; and that it would be improper and 
indelicate to select a private enemy to be a public accuser. 
It was urged on the other side with great force, particularly 
by Mr. Windham, that impartiality, though the first duty of a 
judge, had never been reckoned among the qualities of an 
advocate ; that in the ordinary administration of criminal jus- 
tice among the English, the aggrieved party, the very last 
person who ought to be admitted into the jury-box, is the pros- 
ecutor ; that what was wanted in a manager was, not that he 
should be free from bias, but that he should be able, well- 
informed, energetic, and active. The ability and information 
of Francis were admitted ; and the very animosity with which 
he was reproached, whether a virtue or a vice, was at least a 
pledge for his energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute 
these arguments. But the inveterate hatred borne by Francis 
to Hastings had excited general disgust. The House decided 
that Francis should not be a manager. Pitt voted with the 
majority, Dundas with the minority. 

In the meantime, the preparations for the trial had pro- 
ceeded rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the 
sittings of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles 
more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and 
cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that 
which was then exhibited at Westminster ; but, perhaps, there 
never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cul- 
tivated, a reflecting, and imaginative mind. All the various 
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, 
to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and 



214 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments 
which are developed by liberty and civilization were now dis- 
played, with every advantage that could be derived both from 
co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings 
carried the mind either backward, through many troubled cen- 
turies, to the days when the foundations of our constitution 
were laid ; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to 
dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange 
gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The 
High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms 
handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an English- 
man accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city 
of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. 
The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall 
of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclama- 
tions at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had 
witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution 
of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for 
a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with 
just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the 
High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half 
redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was want- 
ing. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were 
kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, 
were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. 
The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice 
on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords — three- 
fourths of the Upper House as the Upper House then was — 
walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling 
to the tribunal. The junior Baron present led the way — George 
Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable 
defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France 
and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of 
Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, 
and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came 
the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble 



WARREN HASTINGS 215 

bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long 
galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely ex- 
cited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were 
gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, 
and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and 
learning, the representatives of every science and of every 
art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young 
daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors 
of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on 
a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. 
There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked 
with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the 
stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought 
of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against 
Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some 
show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of 
Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter 
and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured 
Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thought- 
ful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen and the sweet 
smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to sus- 
pend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which 
he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition ^ — a treasure too 
often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and 
inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. 
There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the 
heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too 
was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint 
Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, 
art has rescued from the common decay. There were the 
members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and 
exchanged repartees under the rich peacock-hangings of 
Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more per- 
suasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster 
election against palace and treasury shone round Georgiana, 
Duchess of Devonshire. 



2i6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to 
the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not un- 
worthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and 
populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth 
armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high 
place he had so borne himself that all had feared him, that 
most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no 
title to glory except virtue. He looked like a great man, and 
not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriv- 
ing dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference 
to the Court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self- 
respect ; a high and intellectual forehead ; a brow pensive, but 
not gloomy ; a mouth of inflexible decision ; a face pale and 
worn, but serene, on which -was written, as legibly as under 
the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens cequa in 
ardnis — such was the aspect with which the great proconsul 
presented himself to his judges. 

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were after- 
wards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts 
in their profession — the bold and strong-minded Law, after- 
wards Chief Justice of the King's Bench ; the more humane 
and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas ; and Plomer, who, near twenty years later, successfully 
conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Mel- 
ville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and Master of 
the Rolls. 

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much 
notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, 
a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for 
the Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, ap- 
peared in full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to 
remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, 
had paid to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing 
a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors 
of the impeachment ; and his commanding, copious, and sono- 
rous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various 



WARREN HASTINGS 217 

talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the 
duties of a public prosecutor ; and his friends were left with- 
out the help of his excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. 
But in spite of the absence of these two distinguished members 
of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood con- 
tained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared 
together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There 
were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the 
English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or 
negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style 
to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of 
comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every 
orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed 
on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form 
developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelli- 
gence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled 
Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the 
youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most 
of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contend- 
ing for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for 
himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of 
fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the 
height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At 
twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the 
veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British 
Commons at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at 
that bar, save him alone, are gone — culprit, advocates, accusers. 
To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the 
sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But 
those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, 
till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of 
Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl 
Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race 
of men among whom he was not the foremost. 

The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. 
The ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less 



2i8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

tedious than it would otherwise have been by the silver voice 
and just emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near 
relation of the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. 
Four sittings were occupied by his opening speech, which was 
intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With 
an exuberance of thought and a splendour of diction which 
more than satisfied the highly raised expectation of the audience, 
he described the character and institutions of the natives of 
India, recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire 
of Britain had originated, and set forth the constitution of the 
Company and of the English Presidencies. Having thus at- 
tempted to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern 
society as vivid as that which existed in his own mind, he 
proceeded to arraign the administration of Hastings as syste- 
matically conducted in defiance of morality and public law. 
The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expres- 
sions of unwonted admiration from the stern and hostile 
Chancellor, and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the 
resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, 
unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the 
solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to dis- 
play their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable 
emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out ; smelling-bottles were 
handed round ; hysterical sobs and screams were heard .; and 
Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the orator 
concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak 
resounded, "Therefore," said he, "hath it with all confidence 
been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, that I im- 
peach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. 
I impeach him in the name of the Commons' House of Par- 
liament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the 
name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sul- 
lied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, 
whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country 
he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human 
nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every 



WARREN HASTINGS 219 

age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy 
and oppressor of all." 

When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, 
Mr. Fox rose to address the Lords respecting the course of pro- 
ceeding to be followed. The wish of the accusers was that the 
Court would bring to a close the investigation of the first charge 
before the second was opened. The wish of Hastings and of his 
counsel was that the managers should open all the charges, and 
produce all the evidence for the prosecution, before the defence 
began. The Lords retired to their own House to consider 
the question. The Chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord 
Loughborough, who was now in opposition, supported the de- 
mand of the managers. The division showed which way the in- 
clination of the tribunal leaned. A majority of near three to one 
decided in favour of the course for which Hastings contended. 

When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, 
opened the charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days 
were spent in reading papers and hearing witnesses. The next 
article was that relating to the Princesses of Oude. The 
conduct of this part of the case was intrusted to Sheridan. 
The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His 
sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days ; 
but the Hall was crowded to suffocation during the whole 
time. It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single 
ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a knowl- 
edge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to 
sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who 
hugged him with the energy of generous admiration. 

June was now far advanced. The session could not last 
much longer ; and the progress which had been made in the 
impeachment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty 
charges. On two only of these had even the case for the 
prosecution been heard ; and it was now a year since Hastings 
had been admitted to bail. 

The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when 
the Court began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan 



220 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

spoke on the charge relating to the Begums, From that time 
the excitement went down fast. The spectacle had lost the 
attraction of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric were 
over. What was behind was not of a nature to entice men of 
letters from their books in the morning, or to tempt ladies 
who had left the masquerade at two to be out of bed before 
eight. There remained examinations and cross-examinations. 
There remained statements of accounts. There remained the 
reading of papers filled with words unintelligible to English 
ears, with lacs and crores, zemindars and aumils, sunnuds and 
perwannahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained bickerings, 
not always carried on with the best taste or the best temper, 
between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel for 
the defence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. 
There remained the endless marches and countermarches of 
the Peers between their House and the Hall ; for as often as 
a point of law was to be discussed, their Lordships retired to 
discuss it apart ; and the consequence was, as a Peer wittily 
said, that the judges walked and the trial stood still. 

It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, when the trial 
commenced, no important question, either of domestic or 
foreign policy, occupied the public mind. The proceeding in 
Westminster Hall, therefore, naturally attracted most of the 
attention of Parliament and of the country. It was the one 
great event of that season. But in the following year the 
King's illness, the debates on the Regency, the expectation of 
a change of ministry, completely diverted public attention 
from Indian affairs ; and within a fortnight after George the 
Third had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the 
States-General of France met at Versailles. In the midst of 
the agitation produced by these events, the impeachment was 
for a time almost forgotten. 

The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the session of 
1788, when the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and 
when the Peers had little other business before them, only 
thirty-five days were given to the impeachment. In 1789, the 



WARREN HASTINGS 221 

Regency Bill occupied the Upper House till the session was 
far advanced. When the King recovered the circuits were 
beginning. The judges left town ; the Lords waited for the 
return of the oracles of jurisprudence ; and the consequence 
was that during the whole year only seventeen days were 
given to the case of Hastings. It was clear that the matter 
would be protracted to a length unprecedented in the annals 
of criminal law. 

In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though 
it is a fine ceremony, and though it may have been useful in 
the seventeenth century, is not a proceeding from which much 
good can now be expected. Whatever confidence may be 
placed in the decision of the Peers on an appeal arising out of 
ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has the least con- 
fidence in their impartiality when a great public functionary, 
charged with a great state crime, is brought to their bar. 
They are all politicians. There is hardly one among them 
whose vote on an impeachment may not be confidently pre- 
dicted before a witness has been examined ; and even if it 
were possible to rely on their justice, they would still be quite 
unfit to try such a cause as that of Hastings. They sit only 
during half the year. They have to transact much legislative 
and much judicial business. The law-lords, whose advice is 
required to guide the unlearned majority, are employed daily 
in administering justice elsewhere. It is impossible, therefore, 
that during a busy session the Upper House should give 
more than a few days to an impeachment. To expect that 
their Lordships would give up partridge-shooting in order to 
bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to relieve 
accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be unreasonable 
indeed. A well-constituted tribunal, sitting regularly six days 
in the week, and nine hours in the day, would have brought 
the trial of Hastings to a close in less than three months. 
The Lords had not finished their work in seven years. 

The result ceased to be matter of doubt from the time 
when the Lords resolved that they would be guided by the 



222 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

rules of evidence which are received in the inferior courts of 
the realm. Those rules, it is well known, exclude much in- 
formation which would be quite sufficient to determine the 
conduct of any reasonable man in the most important transac- 
tions of private life. These rules at every assize save scores 
of culprits whom judges, jury, and spectators firmly believe 
to be guilty. But when those rules were rigidly applied to 
offences committed many years before, at the distance of 
many thousands of miles, conviction was, of course, out of the 
question. We do not blame the accused and his counsel for 
availing themselves of every legal advantage in order to obtain 
an acquittal. But it is clear that an acquittal so obtained 
cannot be pleaded, in bar of the judgment of history. 

Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to 
put a stop to the trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of 
censure upon Burke, for some violent language which he had 
used respecting the death of Nuncomar and the connection 
between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in 
the last degree both with the House and with the country. 
The asperity and indecency of some expressions which he had 
used during the debates on the Regency had annoyed even 
his warmest friends. The vote of censure was carried ; and 
those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign 
in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he 
considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over 
his personal feelings. He received the censure of the House 
with dignity and meekness, and declared that no personal 
mortification or humiliation should induce him to flinch from 
the sacred duty which he had undertaken. 

In the following year the Parliament was dissolved, and 
the friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new 
House of Commons might not be disposed to go on with the 
impeachment. They began by maintaining that the whole pro- 
ceeding was terminated by the dissolution. Defeated on this 
point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should 
be dropped ; but they were defeated by the combined forces 



WARREN HASTINGS 223 

of the Government and the Opposition. It was, however, 
resolved that, for the sake of expedition, many of the articles 
should be withdrawn. In truth, had not some such measure 
been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant 
was in his grave. 

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pro- 
nounced, near eight years after Hastings had been brought 
by the Serjeant-at-Arms of the Commons to the bar of the 
Lords. On the last day of this great procedure the public 
curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived. Anxiety 
about the judgment there could be none ; for it had been 
fully ascertained that there was a great majority for the de- 
fendant. Nevertheless many wished to see the pageant, and 
the Hall was as much crowded as on the first day. But those 
who, having been present on the first day, now bore a part in 
the proceedings of the last, were few ; and most of those few 
were altered men. 

As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place 
before one generation, and the judgment was pronounced by 
another. The spectator could not look at the woolsack, or at 
the red benches of the Peers, or at the green benches of the 
Commons, without seeing something that reminded him of 
the instability of all human things — of the instability of power 
and fame and life, of the more lamentable instability of friend- 
ship. The great seal was borne before Lord Loughborough, 
who, when the trial commenced, was a fierce opponent of 
Mr. Pitt's government, and who was now a member of that 
government, while Thurlow, who presided in the court when 
it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat scowling 
among the junior barons. Of about a hundred and sixty 
nobles who walked in the procession on the first day, sixty 
had been laid in their family vaults. Still more affecting 
must have been the sight of the managers' box. What had 
become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound together by 
public and private ties, so resplendent with every talent and 
accomplishment ? It had been scattered by calamities more 



224 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

bitter than the bitterness of death. The great chiefs were 
still living, and still in the full vigour of their genius. But 
their friendship was at an end. It had been violently and pub- 
licly dissolved, with tears and stormy reproaches. If those 
men, once so dear to each other, were now compelled to 
meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they 
met as strangers whom public business had brought together, 
and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. 
Burke had in his vortex whirled away Windham. Fox had 
been followed by Sheridan and Grey. 

Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found 
Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and 
to the Begums. On other charges, the majority in his favour 
was still greater. On some, he was unanimously absolved. He 
was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack 
that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. 
He bowed respectfully and retired. 

We have said that the decision had been fully expected. 
It was also generally approved. At the commencement of 
the trial there had been a strong and indeed unreasonable 
feeling against Hastings. At the close of the trial there was 
a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his fa- 
vour. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is com- 
monly called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems 
to us to be merely the general law of human nature. Both 
in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always fol- 
lowed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined 
to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other 
hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue 
rigour. It was thus in the case of Hastings. The length of 
his trial, moreover, made him an object of compassion. It 
was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was 
guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment 
of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. It 
was also felt that, though in the ordinary course of criminal 
law a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions 



WARREN HASTINGS 225 

against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on 
different principles, and that a man who had governed an em- 
pire during thirteen years might have done some very repre- 
hensible things, and yet might be, on the whole, deserving 
of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment. 
The press, an instrument neglected by the prosecutors, was 
used by Hastings and his friends with great effect. Every 
ship, too, that arrived from Madras or Bengal, brought a 
cuddy full of his admirers. Every gentleman from India 
spoke of the late Governor-General as having deserved bet- 
ter, and having been treated worse, than any man living. 
The effect of this testimony, unanimously given by all per- 
sons who knew the East, was naturally very great. Retired 
members of the Indian services, civil and military, were set- 
tled in all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, of 
course, in his own little circle, regarded as an oracle on an 
Indian question ; and they were, with scarcely one exception, 
the zealous advocates of Hastings. It is to be added that the 
numerous addresses to the late Governor-General which his 
friends in Bengal obtained from the natives and transmitted 
to England, made a considerable impression. To these ad- 
dresses we attach little or no importance. That Hastings 
was beloved by the people whom he governed is true ; but 
the eulogies of pundits, zemindars, Mahommedan doctors, 
do not prove it to be true. For an English collector or 
judge would have found it easy to induce any native who 
could write to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler 
that ever was in India. It was said that at Benares, the 
very place at which the acts set forth in the first article of 
impeachment had been committed, the natives had erected a 
temple to Hastings ; and this story excited a strong sensation 
in England. Burke's observations on the apotheosis were ad- 
mirable. He saw no reason for astonishment, he said, in the 
incident which had been represented as so striking. He knew 
something of the mythology of the Brahmins. He knew that 
as they worshipped some gods from love, so they worshipped 



226 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

others from fear. He knew that they erected shrines, not 
only to the benignant deities of Hght and plenty, but also to 
the fiends who preside over smallpox and murder ; nor did 
he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be admitted 
into such a Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as 
one of the finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a 
grave and forcible argument, decorated by the most brilliant 
wit and fancy. 

Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything except 
character he would have been far better off if, when first 
impeached, he had at once pleaded guilty and paid a fine 
of fifty thousand pounds. He was a ruined man. The legal 
expenses of his defence had been enormous. The expenses 
which did not appear in his attorney's bill were perhaps larger 
still. Great sums had been paid to Major Scott. Great sums 
had been laid out in bribing newspapers, rewarding pamphlet- 
eers, and circulating tracts. Burke, so early as 1790, declared 
in the House of Commons that twenty thousand pounds had 
been employed in corrupting the press. It is certain that no 
controversial weapon, from the gravest reasoning to the coars- 
est ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan defended the accused 
Governor with great ability in prose. For the lovers of verse, 
the speeches of the managers were burlesqued in Simpkin's 
letters. It is, we are afraid, indisputable that Hastings stooped 
so low as to court the aid of that malignant and filthy baboon 
John Williams, who called himself Anthony Pasquin. It was 
necessary to subsidize such allies largely. The private hoards 
of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said that the banker 
to whom they had been intrusted had failed. Still, if Hastings 
had practised strict economy, he would, after all his losses, 
have had a moderate competence ; but in the management of 
his private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his 
heart had always been to regain Daylesford. At length, in 
the very year in which his trial commenced, the wish was 
accomplished ; and the domain, alienated more than seventy 
years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords. But 



WARREN HASTINGS 227 

the manor-house was a ruin ; and the grounds round it had, 
during many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded 
to build, to plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto ; 
and, before he was dismissed from the bar of the House of 
Lords, he expended more than forty thousand pounds in 
adorning his seat. 

The general feeling both of the Directors and of the pro- 
prietors of the East India Company was that he had great 
claims on them, that his services to them had been eminent, 
and that his misfortunes had been the effect of his zeal for 
their interest. His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to 
reimburse him the costs of his trial, and to settle on him an 
annuity of five thousand pounds a year. But the consent of 
the Board of Control was necessary ; and at the head of the 
Board of Control was Mr. Dundas, who had himself been a 
party to the impeachment, who had, on that account, been 
reviled with great bitterness by the adherents of Hastings, and 
who, therefore, was not in a very complying mood. He refused 
to consent to what the Directors suggested. The Directors 
remonstrated. A long controversy followed. Hastings, in the 
meantime, was reduced to such distress that he could hardly 
pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise was made. An 
annuity for life of four thousand pounds was settled on Hast- 
ings ; and in order to enable him to meet pressing demands, 
he was to receive ten years' annuity in advance. The Company 
was also permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be 
repaid by instalments without interest. This relief, though 
given in the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the 
retired Governor to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he 
had been a skilful manager. But he was careless and profuse, 
and was more than once under the necessity of applying to 
the Company for assistance, which was liberally given. 

He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity 
which, when he landed from India, he had reason to expect. 
He had then looked forward to a coronet, a red riband, a seat 
at the Council Board, an office at Whitehall. He was then 



228 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

only fifty-two, and might hope for many years of bodily and 
mental vigour. The case was widely different when he left 
the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his 
mind to a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance 
of receiving any mark of royal favour while Mr, Pitt remained 
in power ; and when Mr. Pitt retired, Hastings was approaching 
his seventieth year. 

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in 
politics ; and that interference was not much to his honour. 
In 1804 he exerted himself strenuously to prevent Mr. 
Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had combined, from 
resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man 
so able and energetic as Hastings can have thought that, when 
Bonaparte was at "Boulogne with a great army, the defence of 
our island could safely be intrusted to a ministry which did 
not contain a single person whom flattery could describe as a 
great statesman. It is also certain that, on the important 
question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, and on 
which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as might 
have been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was 
decidedly opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has 
never been the vice of the Indian service, and certainly was 
not the vice of Hastings, But Mr, Addington had treated 
him with marked favour. Fox had been a principal manager 
of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had 
been an impeachment ; and Hastings, we fear, was on this 
occasion guided by personal considerations, rather than by a 
regard to the public interest. 

The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at 
Daylesford. He amused himself with embellishing his grounds, 
riding fine Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying to 
rear Indian animals and vegetables in England. He sent for 
seeds of a very fine custard-apple, from the garden of what 
had once been his own villa, among the green hedgerows of 
Allipore. He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the 
delicious leechee, almost the only fruit of Bengal which 



WARREN HASTINGS 229 

deserves to be regretted even amidst the plenty of Covent 
Garden. The Mogul emperors, in the time of their greatness, 
had in vain attempted to introduce into Hindostan the goat of 
the table-land of Thibet, whose down supplies the looms of 
Cashmere with the materials of the finest shawls. Hastings 
tried, with no better fortune, to rear a breed at Daylesford ; 
nor does he seem to have succeeded better with the cattle of 
Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem as the best fans for 
brushing away the mosquitoes. 

Literature divided his attention with his conservatories and 
his menagerie. He had always loved books, and they were 
now necessary to him. Though not a poet in any high sense 
of the word, he wrote neat and polished lines with great 
facility, and was fond of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we 
must speak out, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin 
than was to be expected from the powers of his mind and 
from the great part which he had played in life. We are 
assured in these Memoirs that the first thing which he did in 
the morning was to write a copy of verses. When the family 
and guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as regu- 
larly as the eggs and rolls ; and Mr. Gleig requires us to believe 
that, if from any accident Hastings came to the breakfast-table 
without one of his charming performances in his hand, the 
omission was felt by all as a grievous disappointment. Tastes 
differ widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however good 
the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been — and we are 
assured that the tea was of the most aromatic flavour, and that 
neither tongue nor venison-pasty was wanting — we should 
have thought the reckoning high if we had been forced to earn 
our repast by listening every day to a new madrigal or sonnet 
composed by our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig 
has preserved this little feature of character, though we think 
it by no means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of 
the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look with- 
out wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in 
the strongest minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the 



230 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

last century, with capacity and vigour equal to the conduct of 
the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and affectations 
of provincial blue-stockings. These great examples may con- 
sole the admirers of Hastings for the affliction of seeing him 
reduced to the level of the Hayleys and Sewards, ' 

When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and 
had long outlived the common age of men, he again became 
for a short time an object of general attention. In 1813 the 
charter of the East India Company was renewed ; and much 
discussion about Indian affairs took place in Parliament. It 
was determined to examine witnesses at the bar of the Com- 
mons ; and Hastings was ordered to attend. He had appeared 
at that bar once before. It was when he read his answer to 
the charges which Burke had laid on the table. Since that 
time twenty-seven years had elapsed ; public feeling had under- 
gone a complete change ; the nation had now forgotten his 
faults, and remembered only his services. The reappearance, 
too, of a man who had been among the most distinguished of 
a generation that had passed away, who now belonged to 
history, and who seemed to have risen from the dead, could 
not but produce a solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons 
received him with acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for 
him, and, when he retired, rose and uncovered. There were, 
indeed, a few who did not sympathize with the general feeling. 
One or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. 
They sat in the same seats which they had occupied when 
they had been thanked for the services which they had 
rendered in Westminster Hall : for, by the courtesy of the 
House, a member who has been thanked in his place is con- 
sidered as having a right always to occupy that place. These 
gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed 
several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an 
innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled 
their hats over their brows ; but the exceptions only made the 
prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable. The Lords received 
the old man with similar tokens of respect. The University 



WARREN HASTINGS 231 

of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws ; 
and in the Sheldonian Theatre the undergraduates welcomed 
him with tumultuous cheering. 

These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks 
of royal favour. Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and 
was admitted to a long private audience of the Prince Regent, 
who treated him very graciously. When the Emperor of 
Russia and the King of Prussia visited England, Hastings 
appeared in their train both at Oxford and in the Guildhall of 
London, and, though surrounded by a crowd of princes and 
great warriors, was everywhere received with marks of respect 
and admiration. He was presented by the Prince Regent both 
to Alexander and to Frederic William ; and his Royal Highness 
went so far as to declare in public that honours far higher than 
a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would soon be paid, 
to the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. 
Hastings now confidently expected a peerage ; but, from some 
unexplained cause, he was again disappointed. 

He lived about four years longer, in the enjoyment of good 
spirits, of faculties not impaired to any painful or degrading 
extent, and of health such as is rarely enjoyed by those who 
attain such an age. At length, on the twenty-second of August, 
18 1 8, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, he met death with 
the same tranquil and decorous fortitude which he had opposed 
to all the trials of his various and eventful life. 

With all his faults — and they were neither few nor small ■ — 
only one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that 
temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of 
twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has 
during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose 
minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of 
the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have 
mingled with the dust of the illustrious accusers. This was 
not to be. Yet the place of interment was not ill chosen. 
Behind the chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in earth 
which already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of 



232 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who has ever 
borne that ancient and widely extended name. On that very- 
spot probably, four-score years before, the little Warren, meanly 
clad and scantily fed, had played with the children of plough- 
men. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might 
be called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not likely 
that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the 
poor orphan retrieved the fallen fortunes of his line. Not only 
had he repurchased the old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling. 
He had preserved and extended an empire. He had founded 
a polity. He had administered government and war with more 
than the capacity of Richelieu. He had patronized learning 
with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked 
by the most forniidable combination of enemies that ever 
sought the destruction of a single victim ; and over that com- 
bination, after a struggle of ten years, he had triumphed. He 
had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness of age, 
in peace after so many troubles, in honour after so much 
obloquy. 

Those who look on his character without favour or malev- 
olence will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all 
social virtue, in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy 
for the sufferings of others, he was deficient. His principles 
were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But 
though we cannot with truth describe him either as a righteous 
or as a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the 
amplitude and fertility of his intellect ; his rare talents for com- 
mand, for administration, and for controversy ; his dauntless 
courage ; his honourable poverty ; his fervent zeal for the inter- 
ests of the State ; his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes 
of fortune, and never disturbed by either. 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 

Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic William, was 
born in January, 17 12, It may safely be pronounced that he 
had received from nature a strong and sharp understanding, 
and a rare firmness of temper and intensity of will. As to the 
other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether they 
are to be ascribed to nature or to the strange training which he 
underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interest- 
ing. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys 
Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched 
heir apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William 
was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power 
had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented 
itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his Majesty 
took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger 
had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the 
street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind 
her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he 
admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study 
and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, 
administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he 
was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, 
and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch 
and Puck, His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina, 
afterwards Margravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manner 
objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He 
despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysi- 
cians, and did not very well understand in what they differed 
from each other. The business of life, according to him, was 
to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited to a prince 
were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer 

=33 



234 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

between the puffs of tlie pipe, to play backgammon for three 
halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges 
by the thousand. The Prince Royal showed little inclination 
either for the serious employments or for the amusements of 
his father. He shirked the duties of the parade ; he detested 
the fume of tobacco ; he had no taste either for backgammon 
or for field sports. He had an exquisite ear, and performed 
skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had been French 
refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for 
French literature and French society. Frederic William re- 
garded these tastes as effeminate and contemptible, and, by 
abuse and persecution, made them still stronger. Things became 
worse when the Prince Royal attained that time of life at which 
the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place. 
He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions, which no good 
and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later period 
he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History 
averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name — vices 
such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper 
Coventry, " the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth 
man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his 
youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They 
excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all 
faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who 
conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his 
brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation. The 
Prince Royal, too, was not one of those who are content to 
take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and 
brought forward arguments which seemed to savour of some- 
thing different from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected 
that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, 
whether Calvinist or Atheist his Majesty did not very well 
know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic William was bad 
enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a 
Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated 
his hatred. The flute was broken ; the French books were 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 235 

sent out of the palace ; the Prince was kicked and cudgelled, 
and pulled by the hair. At dinner the plates were hurled at 
his head ; sometimes he was restricted to bread and water ; 
sometimes he was forced to swallow food so nauseous that he 
could not keep it on his stomach. Once his father knocked 
him down, dragged him along the floor to a window, and was 
with difficulty prevented from strangling him with the cord of 
the curtain. The Queen, for the crime of not wishing to see 
her son murdered, was subjected to the grossest indignities. 
The Princess Wilhelmina, who took her brother's part, was 
treated almost as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg's apprentices. Driven 
to despair, the unhappy youth tried to run away. Then the fury 
of the old tyrant rose to madness. The Prince was an officer 
in the army : his flight was therefore desertion ; and in the 
moral code of Frederic William, desertion was the highest of 
all crimes. "Desertion," says this royal theologian, in one of 
his half-crazy letters, " is from hell. It is a work of the 
children of the Devil. No child of God could possibly be 
guilty of it." An accomplice of the Prince, in spite of the 
recommendation of a court-martial, was mercilessly put to death. 
It seemed probable that the Prince himself would suffer the 
same fate. It was with difficulty that the intercession of the 
States of Holland, of the Kings of Sweden and Poland, and 
of the Emperor of Germany saved the House of Brandenburg 
from the stain of an unnatural murder. After months of cruel 
suspense, P'rederic learned that his life would be spared. He 
remained, however, long a prisoner ; but he was not on that 
account to be pitied. He found in his gaolers a tenderness 
which he had never found in his father. His table was not 
sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity 
to appease hunger ; he could read the Hcnriadc without being 
kicked, and could play on his flute without having it broken 
over his head. 

When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had 
nearly completed his twenty first year, and could scarcely be 
kept much longer under the restraints which had made his 



236 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured his understanding, 
while it had hardened his heart and soured his temper. He 
had learnt self-command and dissimulation ; he affected to 
conform to some of his father's views, and submissively 
accepted a wife, who was a wife only in name, from his father's 
hand. He also served with credit, though without any oppor- 
tunity of acquiring brilliant distinction, under the command of 
Prince Eugene, during a campaign marked by no extraordinary 
events. He was now permitted to keep a separate establish- 
ment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution his own 
tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no 
doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to 
military and political business, and thus gradually acquired 
such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates 
were not aware that he possessed. 

His favourite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier 
which separates the Prussian dominions from the Duchy of 
Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a fertile and smiling spot, in the 
midst of the sandy waste of the Marquisate. The mansion, 
surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks out upon a 
spacious lake. There Frederic -amused himself by laying out 
gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, by building 
obelisks, temples, and conservatories, and by collecting rare 
fruits and flowers. His retirement was enlivened by a few 
companions, among whom he seems to have preferred those 
who, by birth or extraction, were French. With these intimates 
he dined and supped well, drank freely, and amused himself 
sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters 
of a fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard ; but 
literature was his chief resource. 

His education had been entirely French. The long ascend- 
ency which Louis the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the 
eminent merit of the tragic and comic dramatists, of the 
satirists, and of the preachers who had flourished under that 
magnificent prince, had made the French language predominant 
in Europe. Even in countries which had a national literature, 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 237 

and which could boast of names greater than those of Racine, 
of Moliere, and of Massillon — in the country of Dante, in the 
country of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton - — 
the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a great extent 
adopted. Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece 
of poetry or eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French 
taste reigned without rival and without limit. Every youth of 
rank was taught to speak and write French. That he should 
speak and write his own tongue with politeness, or even with 
accuracy and facility, was regarded as comparatively an un- 
important object. Even Frederic William, with all his rugged 
Saxon prejudices, thought it necessary that his children should 
know French, and quite unnecessary that they should be well 
versed in German. The Latin was positively interdicted. "" My 
son," his Majesty wrote, "shall not learn Latin ; and, more than 
that, I will not suffer anybody even to mention such a thing to 
me." One of the preceptors ventured to read the Goldeji 
Bull in the original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William 
entered the room, and broke out in his usual kingly style : 

" Rascal, what are you at there ? " 

" Please your Majesty," answered the preceptor, " I was 
explaining the Golden Bull to his Royal Highness." 

" I '11 Golden Bull you, you rascal !" roared the Majesty of 
Prussia. Up went the King's cane ; away ran the terrified 
instructor ; and Frederic's classical studies ended for ever. 
He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences, and 
produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as these : "Stante 
pede morire " ; "De gustibus non est disputandus " ; "Tot 
verbas tot spondera." Of Italian he had not enough to read 
a page of Metastasio with ease ; and of the Spanish and 
English, he did not, as far as we are aware, understand 
a single word. . . . 

Early in the year 1740, Frederic William met death with a 
firmness and dignity worthy of a better and wiser man ; and 
Frederic, who had just completed his twenty-eighth year, 
became King of Prussia. His character was little understood. 



238 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

That he had good abihties, indeed, no person who had talked 
with him or corresponded with him could doubt. But the easy 
Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and 
good wine, of music, of conversation, of light literature, led 
many to regard him as a sensual and intellectual voluptuary. 
His habit of canting about moderation, peace, liberty, and the 
happiness which a good mind derives from the happiness of 
others had imposed on some who should have known better. 
Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after 
Fenelon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean 
age — an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropi- 
tious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant 
of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more 
extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without 
mercy, had ascended the throne. 

The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon-companion's 
coronation was not more bitter than that which awaited some 
of the inmates of Rheinsberg. They had long looked forward 
to the accession of their patron as to the event from which their 
own prosperity and greatness were to date. They had at last 
reached the promised land — the land which they had figured to 
themselves as flowing with milk and honey — and they found it 
a desert. "No more of these fooleries," was the short, sharp 
admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became 
plain that, in the most important points, the new sovereign bore 
a strong family likeness to his predecessor. There was, indeed, 
a wide difference between the father and the son as respected 
extent and vigour of intellect, speculative opinions, amuse- 
ments, studies, outward demeanour. But the groundwork of 
the character was the same in both. To both were common 
the love of order, the love of business, the military taste, the 
parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to 
ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But 
these propensities had in P>ederic William partaken of the 
general unsoundness of his mind, and wore a very different 
aspect when found in company with the strong and cultivated 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 239 

understanding of his successor. Thus, for example, Frederic was 
as anxious as any prince could be about the efficiency of his army. 
But this anxiety never degenerated into a monomania like that 
which led his father to pay fancy prices for giants. Frederic 
was as thrifty about money as any prince or any private man 
ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it 
was worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose 
of saving four or five rix-dollars in the year. Frederic was, we 
fear, as malevolent as his father ; but Frederic's wit enabled 
him often to show his malevolence in ways more decent than 
those to which his father resorted, and* to inflict misery and 
degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, 
by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking 
and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter dif- 
fered in some important respects from his father's. To Frederic 
William, the mere circumstance that any persons whatever, 
men, women, or children, Prussians or foreigners, were within 
reach of his toes and of his cane appeared to be a sufficient 
reason for proceeding to belabour them. Frederic required 
provocation as well as vicinity ; nor was he ever known to in- 
flict this paternal species of correction on any but his born 
subjects ; though on one occasion M. Thiebault had reason, 
during a few seconds, to anticipate the high honour of being 
an exception to this general rule. . . , 

He had, from the commencement of his reign, applied him- 
self to public business after a fashion unknown among kings, 
Louis the Fourteenth, indeed, had been his own prime minis- 
ter, and had exercised a general superintendence over all the 
departments of the Government ; but this was not sufficient 
for Frederic. He was not content with being his own prime 
minister ; he would be his own sole minister. Under him there 
was no room, not merely for a Richelieu or a Mazarin, but for 
a Colbert, a Louvois, or a Torcy, A love of labour for its own 
sake, a restless and insatiable longing to dictate, to intermed- 
dle, to make his power felt, a profound scorn and distrust of 
his fellow-creatures, made him unwilling to ask counsel, to 



240 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

confide important secrets, to delegate ample powers. The high- 
est functionaries under his government were mere clerks, and 
were not so much trusted by him as valuable clerks are often 
trusted by the heads of departments. He was his own treas- 
urer, his own commander-in-chief, his own intendant of public 
works, his own minister for trade and justice, for home affairs 
and foreign affairs, his own master of the horse, steward, and 
chamberlain. Matters of which no chief of an office in any 
other government would ever hear were, in this singular mon- 
archy, decided by the King in person. If a traveller wished 
for a good place to see a review, he had to write to Frederic, 
and received next day from a royal messenger Frederic's 
answer signed by Frederic's own hand. This was an extrava- 
gant, a morbid activity. The public business would assuredly 
have been better done if each department had been put under 
a man of talents and integrity, and if the King had con- 
tented himself with a general control. In this manner the 
advantages which belong to unity of design, and the advan- 
tages which belong to the division of labour, would have been 
to a great extent combined. But such a system would not have 
suited the peculiar temper of Frederic. He could tolerate no 
will, no reason, in the State save his own. He wished for 
no abler assistance than that of penmen who had just under- 
standing enough to translate and transcribe, to make out his 
scrawls, and to put his concise Yes and No into an official 
form. Of the higher intellectual faculties, there is as much in 
a copying-machine or a lithographic press as he required from 
a secretary of the cabinet. 

His own exertions were such as were hardly to be expected 
from a human body or a human mind. At Potsdam, his ordi- 
nary residence, he rose at three in summer and four in win- 
ter. A page soon appeared with a large basket full of all the 
letters which had arrived for the King by the last courier — 
despatches ■ from ambassadors, reports from officers of revenue, 
plans of buildings, proposals for draining marshes, complaints 
from persons who thought themselves aggrieved, applications 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 241 

from persons who wanted titles, military commissions, and civil 
situations. He examined the seals with a keen eye ; for he 
was never for a moment free from the suspicion that some 
fraud might be practised on him. Then he read the letters, 
divided them into several packets, and signified his pleasure, 
generally by a mark, often by two or three words, now and 
then by some cutting epigram. By eight he had generally fin- 
ished this part of his task. The adjutant-general was then in 
attendance, and received instructions for the day as to all the 
military arrangements of the kingdom. Then the King went to 
review his guards, not as kings ordinarily review their guards, 
but with the minute attention and severity of an old drill- 
sergeant. In the meantime the four cabinet secretaries had 
been employed in answering the letters on which the King 
had that morning signified his will. These unhappy men were 
forced to work all the year round like negro slaves in the time 
of the sugar-crop. They never had a holiday. They never 
knew what it was to dine. It was necessary that before they 
stirred they should finish the whole of their work. The King, 
always on his guard against treachery, took from the heap a 
handful of letters at random and looked into them to see 
whether his instructions had been exactly followed. This was 
no bad security against foul play on the part of the secretaries ; 
for if one of them were detected in a trick, he might think 
himself fortunate if he escaped with five years of imprison- 
ment in a dungeon. Frederic then signed the replies, and all 
were sent off the same evening. 

The general principles on which this strange government 
was conducted deserve attention. The policy of Frederic was 
essentially the same as his father's ; but Frederic, while he 
carried that policy to lengths to which his father never thought 
of carrying it, cleared it, at the same time, from the absurdities 
with which his father had encumbered it. The King's first 
object was to have a great, efficient, and well-trained army. 
He had a kingdom which in extent and population was hardly 
in the second rank of European powers ; and yet he aspired 



242 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to a place not inferior to that of the sovereigns of England, 
France, and Austria. For that end it was necessary that Prus- 
sia should be all sting. Louis the Fifteenth, with five times 
as many subjects as Frederic, and more than five times as 
large a revenue, had not a more formidable army. The propor- 
tion which the soldiers in Prussia bore to the people seems 
hardly credible. Of the males in the vigour of life, a seventh 
part were probably under arms ; and this great force had, by 
drilling, by reviewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and 
scourge, been taught to perform all evolutions with a rapidity 
and a precision which would have astonished Villars or Eugene. 
The elevated feelings which are necessary to the best kind of 
army were then wanting to the I^russian service. In those ranks 
were not found the religious and political enthusiasm which 
inspired the pikemen of Cromwell ; the patriotic ardour, the 
thirst of glory, the devotion to a great leader, which inflamed 
the Old Guard of Napoleon. But in all the mechanical parts 
of the military calling the Prussians were as superior to the 
English and P'rench troops of that day as the English and 
French troops to a rustic militia. 

Though the pay of the Prussian soldier was small, though 
every rix-dollar of extraordinary charge was scrutinized by 
P'rederic with a vigilance and suspicion such as Mr. Joseph 
Hume never brought to the examination of an army estimate, 
the expense of such an establishment was, for the means of 
the country, enormous. In order that it might not be utterly 
ruinous, it was necessary that every other expense should be 
cut down to the lowest possible point. Accordingly Frederic, 
though his dominions bordered on the sea, had no navy. He 
neither had nor wished to have colonies. His judges, his fiscal 
officers, were meanly paid. His ministers at foreign courts 
walked on foot, or drove shabby old carriages till the axle- 
trees gave way. Even to his highest diplomatic agents, who 
resided at London and Paris, he allowed less than a thousand 
pounds sterling a year. The royal household was managed 
with a frugality unusual in the establishments of opulent 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 243 

subjects, unexampled in any other palace. The King loved 
good eating and drinking, and during great part of his life 
took pleasure in seeing his table surrounded by guests ; yet 
the whole charge of his kitchen was brought within the sum 
of two thousand pounds sterling a year. He examined every 
extraordinary item with a care which might be thought to suit 
the mistress of a boarding-house better than a great prince. 
When more than four rix-dollars were asked of him for a hun- 
dred oysters, he stormed as if he had heard that one of his 
generals had sold a fortress to the Empress Queen, Not a 
bottle of champagne was uncorked without his express order. 
The game of the royal parks and forests, a serious head of 
expenditure in most kingdoms, was to him a source of profit. 
The whole was farmed out ; and though the farmers were 
almost ruined by their contract, the King would grant them 
no remission. His wardrobe consisted of one fine gala dress, 
which lasted him all his life, of two or three old coats fit for 
Monmouth Street, of yellow waistcoats soiled with snuff, and 
of huge boots embrowned by time. One taste alone sometimes 
allured him beyond the limits of parsimony — nay, even beyond 
the limits of prudence — the taste for building. In all other 
things his economy was such as we might call by a harsher 
name, if we did not reflect that his funds were drawn from a 
heavily taxed people, and that it was impossible for him, with- 
out excessive tyranny, to keep up at once a formidable army 
and a splendid court. 

Considered as an administrator, Frederic had undoubtedly 
many titles to praise. Order was strictly maintained through- 
out his dominions. Property was secure. A great liberty of 
speaking and of writing was allowed. Confident in the irre- 
sistible strength derived from a great army, the King looked 
down on malcontents and libellers with a wise disdain, and 
gave little encouragement to spies and informers. When he 
was told of the disaffection of one of his subjects, he merely 
asked, "How many thousand men can he bring into the 
field ? " He once saw a crowd staring at something on a wall. 



244 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He rode up and found that the object of curiosity was a 
scurrilous placard against himself. The placard had been 
posted up so high that it was not easy to read it. Frederic 
ordered his attendants to take it down and put it, lower. " My 
people and I," he said, " have come to an agreement which 
satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am 
to do what I please." No person would have dared to publish 
in London satires on George the Second approaching to the 
atrocity of those satires on Frederic which the booksellers at 
Berlin sold with impunity. One bookseller sent to the palace 
a copy of the most stinging lampoon that perhaps was ever 
written in the world — -the Memoirs of Voltaire, published by 
Beaumarchais — and asked for his Majesty's orders. " Do not 
advertise it in an offensive manner," said the King, " but sell 
it by all means. I hope it will pay you well." Even among 
statesmen accustomed to the license of a free press, such 
steadfastness of mind as this is not very common. 

It is due also to the memory of Frederic to say that he 
earnestly laboured to secure to his people the great blessing 
of cheap and speedy justice. He was one of the first rulers 
who abolished the cruel and absurd practice of torture. No 
sentence of death pronounced by the ordinary tribunals was 
executed without his sanction ; and his sanction, except in 
cases of murder, was rarely given. Towards his troops he 
acted in a very different manner. Military offences were 
punished with such barbarous scourging that to be shot was 
considered by the Prussian soldier as a secondary punishment. 
Indeed, the principle which pervaded F"rederic's whole policy 
was this, that the more severely the army is governed, the 
safer it is to treat the rest of the community with lenity. 

Religious persecution was unknown under his government, 
unless some foolish and unjust restrictions which lay upon the 
Jews may be regarded as forming an exception. His policy 
with respect to the Catholics of Silesia presented an honour- 
able contrast to the policy which, under very similar circum- 
stances, England long followed with respect to the Catholics 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 245 

of Ireland. Every form of religion and irreligion found an 
asylum in the States, The scoffer whom the parliaments of 
France had sentenced to a cruel death was consoled by a 
commission in the Prussian service. The Jesuit who could 
show his face nowhere else, who in Britain was still subject 
to penal laws, who was proscribed by France, Spain, Portugal, 
and Naples, who had been given up even by the Vatican, 
found safety and the means of subsistence in the Prussian 
dominions. 

Most of the vices of Frederic's administration resolve them- 
selves into one vice — the spirit of meddling. The indefatigable 
activity of his intellect, his dictatorial temper, his military 
habits — all inclined him to this great fault. He drilled his 
people as he drilled his grenadiers. Capital and industry were 
diverted from their natural direction by a crowd of preposterous 
regulations. There was a monopoly of coffee, a monopoly of 
tobacco, a monopoly of refined sugar. The public money, of 
which the King was generally so sparing, was lavishly spent 
in ploughing bogs, in planting mulberry trees amidst the sand, 
in bringing sheep from Spain to improve the Saxon wool, in 
bestowing prizes for fine yarn, in building manufactories of 
porcelain, manufactories of carpets, manufactories of hardware, 
manufactories of lace. Neither the experience of other rulers 
nor his own could ever teach him that something more than 
an edict and a grant of public money was required to create a 
Lyons, a Brussels, or a Birmingham. 

For his commercial policy, however, there was some excuse. 
He had on his side illustrious examples and popular prejudice. 
Grievously as he- erred, he erred in company with his age. 
In other departments his meddling was altogether without 
apology. He interfered with the course of justice as well as 
with the course of trade, and set up his own crude notions of 
equity against the law as expounded by the unanimous voice 
of the gravest magistrates. It never occurred to him that men 
whose lives were passed in adjudicating on questions of civil 
right were more likely to form correct opinions on such 



246 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

questions than a prince whose attention was divided among a 
thousand objects, and who had never read a law-book through. 
The resistance opposed to him by the tribunals inflamed him 
to fury. He reviled his Chancellor. He kicked the shins of 
his judges. He did not, it is true, intend to act unjustly. 
He firmly believed that he was doing right and defending the 
cause of the poor against the wealthy. Yet this well-meant 
meddling probably did far more harm than all the explosions 
of his evil passions during the whole of his long reign. We 
could make shift to live under a debauchee or a tyrant, but 
to be ruled by a busybody is more than human nature can bear. 

The same passion for directing and regulating appeared in 
every part of the King's policy. Every lad of a certain station 
in life was forced to go to certain schools within the Prussian 
dominions. If a young Prussian repaired, though but for a 
few weeks, to Leyden or Gottingen for the purpose of study, 
the offence was punished with civil disabilities, and sometimes 
with the confiscation of property. Nobody was to travel with- 
out the royal permission. If the permission were granted, the 
pocket-money of the tourist was fixed by royal ordinance. A 
merchant might take with him two hundred and fifty rix- 
dollars in gold, a noble was allowed to take four hundred ; 
for it may be observed, in passing, that Frederic studiously 
kept up the old distinction between the nobles and the com- 
munity. In speculation he was a French philosopher, but in 
action a German prince. He talked and wrote about the 
privileges of blood in the style of Sieyes ; but in practice no 
chapter in the empire looked with a keener eye to genealogies 
and quarter ings. 

Such was Frederic the Ruler. But there was another 
Frederic — the Frederic of Rheinsberg, the fiddler and flute- 
player, the poetaster and metaphysician. Amidst the cares of 
State the King had retained his passion for music, for reading, 
for writing, for literary society. To these amusements he 
devoted all the time that he could snatch from the business of 
war and government ; and perhaps more light is thrown on 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 



247 



his character by what passed during his hours of relaxation 
than by his battles or his laws. 

It was the just boast of Schiller that, in his country, no 
Augustus, no Lorenzo, had watched over the infancy of poetry. 
The rich and energetic language of Luther, driven by the 
Latin from the schools of pedants, and by the French from 
the palaces of kings, had taken refuge among the people. Of 
the powers of that language Frederic had no notion. He gen- 
erally spoke of it, and of those who used it, with the contempt 
of ignorance. His library consisted of French books ; at his 
table nothing was heard but French conversation. The asso- 
ciates of his hours of relaxation were, for the most part, 
foreigners. Britain furnished to the royal circle two distin- 
guished men, born in the highest rank, and driven by civil 
dissensions from the land to which, under happier circum- 
stances, their talents and virtues might have been a source of 
strength and glory. George Keith, Earl Mareschal of Scotland, 
had taken arms for the House of Stuart in 171 5, and his 
younger brother James, then only seventeen years old, had 
fought gallantly by his side. When all was lost, they retired 
together to the Continent, roved from country to country, 
served under various standards, and so bore themselves as to 
win the respect and goodwill of many who had no love for the 
Jacobite cause. Their long wanderings terminated at Potsdam ; 
nor had Frederic any associates who deserved or obtained so 
large a share of his esteem. They were not only accomplished 
men, but nobles and warriors, capable of serving him in war 
and diplomacy, as well as of amusing him at supper. Alone 
of all his companions they appear never to have had reason to 
complain of his demeanour towards them. Some of those who 
knew the palace best pronounced that the Lord Mareschal was 
the only human being whom Frederic ever really loved. 

Italy sent to the parties at Potsdam the ingenious and 
amiable Algarotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and 
servile of Abbes. But the greater part of the society which 
Frederic had assembled round him was drawn from France. 



248 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity by the journey which 
he had made to Lapland for the purpose of ascertaining, by 
actual measurement, the shape of our planet. He was placed 
in the chair of the Academy of Berlin, a humble imitation of 
the renowned academy of Paris. Baculard D'Arnaud, a young 
poet who was thought to have given promise of great things, 
had been induced to quit his country and to reside at the 
Prussian Court. The Marquess D'Argens was among the 
King's favourite companions, on account, as it should seem, 
of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts 
of D'Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished 
French gentleman ; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, 
timidity, and self-indulgence. He was one of that abject class 
of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hat- 
ing Christianity with a rancour which made him incapable of 
rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of 
the universe the traces of divine power and wisdom, he was 
the slave of dreams and omens, would not sit down to table 
with thirteen in company, turned pale if the salt fell towards 
him, begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on 
their plates, and would not for the world commence a journey 
on Friday. His health was a subject of constant anxiety to 
him. Whenever his head ached or his pulse beat quick, his 
dastardly fears and effeminate precautions were the jest of all 
Berlin, All this suited the King's purpose admirably. He 
wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and whom 
he might despise. When he wished to pass half an hour in 
easy polished conversation, D'Argens was an excellent com- 
panion ; when he wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, 
D'Argens was an excellent butt. 

With these associates, and others of the same class, Frederic 
loved to spend the time which he could steal from public cares. 
He wished his supper-parties to be gay and easy. He invited 
his guests to lay aside all restraint, and to forget that he was 
at the head of a hundred and sixty thousand soldiers, and was 
absolute master of the life and liberty of all who sat at meat 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 249 

with him. There was, therefore, at these parties the outward 
show of ease. The wit and learning of the company were os- 
tentatiously displayed. The discussions on history and litera- 
ture were often highly interesting. But the absurdity of all 
the religions known among men was the chief topic of con- 
versation ; and the audacity with which doctrines and names 
venerated throughout Christendom were treated on these oc- 
casions startled even persons accustomed to the society of 
French and English freethinkers. Real liberty, however, or 
real affection, was in this brilliant society not to be found. 
Absolute kings seldom have friends ; and Frederic's faults 
were such as, even where perfect equality exists, make friend- 
ship exceedingly precarious. He had, indeed, many qualities 
which, on a first acquaintance, were captivating. His conver- 
sation was lively ; his manners, to those whom he desired to 
please, were even caressing. No man could flatter with more 
delicacy. No man succeeded more completely in inspiring 
those who approached him with vague hopes of some great 
advantage from his kindness. But under this fair exterior he 
was a tyrant, suspicious, disdainful, and malevolent. He had 
one taste which may be pardoned in a boy, but which, when 
habitually and deliberately indulged by a man of mature age 
and strong understanding, is almost invariably the sign of a 
bad heart — a taste for severe practical jokes. If a courtier 
was fond of dress, oil was flung over his richest suit. If he 
was fond of money, some prank was invented to make him 
disburse more than he could spare. If he was hypochondri- 
acal, he was made to believe that he had the dropsy. If he 
had particularly set his heart on visiting a place, a letter was 
forged to frighten him from going thither. These things, it 
may be said, are trifles. They are so ; but they are indications, 
not to be mistaken, of a nature to which the sight of human 
suffering and human degradation is an agreeable excitement. 

Frederic had a keen eye for the foibles of others, and loved 
to communicate his discoveries. He had some talent for sar- 
casm, and considerable skill in detecting the sore places where 



250 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

sarcasm would be most acutely felt. His vanity, as well as his 
malignity, found gratification in the vexation and confusion of 
those who smarted under his caustic jests. Yet in truth his 
success on these occasions belonged quite as much to the king 
as to the wit. We read that Commodus descended, sword in 
hand, into the arena against a wretched gladiator, armed only 
with a foil of lead, and, after shedding the blood of the help- 
less victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious vic- 
tory. The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were 
of much the same kind. How to deal with him was the most 
puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence 
was to disobey his commands and to spoil his amusement. 
Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to in- 
dulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain 
to make them repent of their presumption by some cruel hu- 
miliation. To resent his affronts was perilous ; yet not to re- 
sent them was to deserve and to invite them. In his view, 
those who mutinied were insolent and ungrateful ; those who 
submitted were curs made to receive bones and kickings with 
the same fawning patience. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive 
how anything short of the rage of hunger should have induced 
men to bear the misery of being the associates of the Great 
King. It was no lucrative post. His Majesty was as severe 
and economical in his friendships as in the other charges of 
his establishment, and as unlikely to give a rix-dollar too much 
for his guests as for his dinners. The sum which he allowed 
to a poet or a philosopher was the very smallest sum for which 
such poet or philosopher could be induced to sell himself into 
slavery ; and the bondsman might think himself fortunate if 
what had been so grudgingly given was not, after years of 
suffering, rudely and arbitrarily withdrawn. 

Potsdam was, in truth, what it was called by one of its most 
illustrious inmates, the Palace of Alcina. At the first glance 
it seemed to be a delightful spot, where every intellectual and 
physical enjoyment awaited the happy adventurer. Every new- 
comer was received with eager hospitality, intoxicated with 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 251 

flattery, encouraged to expect prosperity and greatness. It was 
in vain that a long succession of favourites who had entered 
that abode with dehght and hope, and who, after a short term 
of delusive happiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly 
by years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices 
to warn the aspirant who approached the charmed threshold. 
Some had wisdom enough to discover the truth eajly, and 
spirit enough to fly without looking back ; others lingered on 
to a cheerless and unhonoured old age. We have no hesita- 
tion in saying that the poorest author of that time in London, 
sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, 
and a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of 
the literary inmates of Frederic's Court. . . . 

Maria Theresa had never for a moment forgotten the great 
wrong which she had received at the hand of Frederic, 
Young and delicate, just left an orphan, just about to be a 
mother, she had been compelled to fly from the ancient capital 
of her race ; she had seen her fair inheritance dismembered 
by robbers, and of those robbers he had been the foremost. 
Without a pretext, without a provocation, in defiance of the 
most sacred engagements, he had attacked the helpless ally 
whom he was bound to defend. The Empress Queen had the 
faults as well as the virtues which are connected with quick 
sensibility and a high spirit. There was no peril which she 
was not ready to brave, no calamity which she was not ready 
to bring on her subjects, or on the whole human race, if only 
she might once taste the sweetness of a complete revenge. 
Revenge, too, presented itself, to her narrow and superstitious 
mind, in the guise of duty. Silesia had been wrested not only 
from the House of Austria, but from the Church of Rome. 
The conqueror had indeed permitted his new subjects to 
worship God after their own fashion ; but this was not enough. 
To bigotry it seemed an intolerable hardship that the Catholic 
Church, having long enjoyed ascendency, should be compelled 
to content itself with equality. Nor was this the only circum- 
stance which led Maria Theresa to regard her enemy as the 



252 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

enemy of God. The profaneness of Frederic's writings and 
conversation, and the frightful rumours which were circulated 
respecting the immorality of his private life, naturally shocked 
a woman who believed with the firmest faith all that her con- 
fessor told her, and who, though surrounded by temptations, 
though young and beautiful, though ardent in all her passions, 
though possessed of absolute power, had preserved her fame 
unsullied even by the breath of slander. 

To recover Silesia, to humble the dynasty of Hohenzollern 
to the dust, was the great object of her life. She toiled during 
many years for this end, with zeal as indefatigable as that 
which the poet ascribed to the stately goddess who tired out 
her immortal horses in the work of raising the nations against 
Troy, and who offered to give up to destruction her darling 
Sparta and Mycenae, if only she might once see the smoke 
going up from the palace of Priam. With even such a spirit 
did the proud Austrian Juno strive to array against her foe a 
coalition such as Europe had never seen. Nothing would 
content her but that the whole civilized world, from the White 
Sea to the Adriatic, from the Bay of Biscay to the pastures of 
the wild horses of the Tanais, should be combined in arms 
against one petty State. 

She early succeeded by various arts in obtaining the adhe- 
sion of Russia. An ample share of spoil was promised to the 
King of Poland ; and that prince, governed by his favourite, 
Count Bruhl, readily promised the assistance of the . Saxon 
forces. The great difficulty was with France. That the 
Houses of Bourbon and of Hapsburg should ever cordially 
co-operate in any great scheme of European policy had long 
been thought, to use the strong expression of Frederic, just as 
impossible as that fire and water should amalgamate. The 
whole history of the Continent during two centuries and a 
half had been the history of the mutual jealousies and en- 
mities of France and Austria. Since the administration of 
Richelieu, above all, it had been considered as the plain policy 
of the Most Christian King to thwart on all occasions the 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 253 

Court of Vienna, and to protect every member of the Ger- 
manic body who stood up against the dictation of the Caesars. 
Common sentiments of rehgion had been unable to mitigate 
this strong antipathy. The rulers of France, even while 
clothed in the Roman purple, even while persecuting the 
heretics of Rochelle and Auvergne, had still looked with 
favour on the Lutheran and Calvinistic princes who were 
struggling against the chief of the empire. If the French 
ministers had paid any respect to the traditional rules handed 
down to them through many generations, they would have 
acted towards Frederic as the greatest of their predecessors 
acted towards Gustavus Adolphus. That there was deadly 
enmity between Prussia and Austria was of itself a sufficient 
reason for close friendship between Prussia and France. With 
France Frederic could never have any serious controversy. 
His territories were so situated that his ambition, greedy and 
unscrupulous as it was, could never impel him to attack her 
of his own accord. He was more than half a Frenchman ; 
he wrote, spoke, read nothing but PYench ; he delighted in 
French society ; the admiration of the French he proposed to 
himself as the best reward of all his exploits. It seemed 
incredible that any French Government, however notorious 
for levity or stupidity, could spurn away such an ally. 

The Court of Vienna, however, did not despair. The Aus- 
trian diplomatists propounded a new scheme of politics, which, 
it must be owned, was not altogether without plausibility. The 
great powers, according to this theory, had long been under a 
delusion. They had looked on each other as natural enemies, 
while, in truth, they were natural allies. A succession of cruel 
wars had devastated Europe, had thinned the population, had 
exhausted the public resources, had loaded governments with 
an immense burden of debt ; and when, after two hundred 
years of murderous hostility or of hollow truce, the illustrious 
Houses whose enmity had distracted the world sat down to 
count their gains, to what did the real advantage on either side 
amount ? Simply to this, that they had kept each other from 



254 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

thriving. It was not the King of France, it was not the 
Emperor, who had reaped the fruits of the Thirty Years' War, 
or of the War of the Pragmatic Sanction. Those fruits had been 
pilfered by states of the second and tliird rank, which, secured 
against jealousy by their insignificance, had dexterously aggran- 
dized themselves while pretending to serve the animosity of 
the great chiefs of Christendom. While the lion and tiger 
were tearing each other, the jackal had run off into the jungle 
with the prey. The real gainer by the Thirty Years' War had 
been neither France nor Austria, but Sweden. The real gainer 
by the War of the Pragmatic Sanction had been neither France 
nor Austria, but the upstart of Brandenburg. France had 
made great efforts, had added largely to her military glory, 
and largely to her public burdens. And for what end ? Merely 
that Frederic might rule Silesia. For this, and this alone, one 
French army, wasted by sword and famine, had perished in 
Bohemia ; and another had purchased with floods of the noblest 
blood, the barren glory of Fontenoy. And this prince, for 
whom France had suffered so much, was he a grateful, was he 
even an honest ally ? Had he not been as false to the Court 
of Versailles as to the Court of Vienna ? Had he not played, 
on a large scale, the same part which, in private life, is played 
by the vile agent of chicane who sets his neighbours quarrelling, 
involves them in costly and interminable litigation, and betrays 
them to each other all round, certain that, whoever may be 
ruined, he shall be enriched ? Surely the true wisdom of the 
great powers was to attack, not each other, but this common 
barrator, who, by inflaming the passions of both, by pretending 
to serve both, and by deserting both, had raised himself above 
the station to which he was born. The great object of Austria 
was to regain Silesia ; the great object of PVance was to obtain 
an accession of territory on the side of Flanders. If they took 
opposite sides, the result would probably be that, after a war 
of many years, after the slaughter of many thousands of brave 
men, after the waste of many millions of crowns, they would 
lay down their arms without having achieved either object ; 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 255 

but if they came to an understanding, there would be no risk 
and no difficulty. Austria would willingly make in Belgium 
such cessions as France could not expect to obtain by ten 
pitched battles. Silesia would easily be annexed to the mon- 
archy of which it had long been a part. The union of two 
such powerful governments would at once overawe the King 
of Prussia. If he resisted, one short campaign would settle 
his fate. France and Austria, long accustomed to rise from 
the game of war both losers, would, for the first time, both be 
gainers. There could be no room for jealousy between them. 
The power of both would be increased at once ; the equilib- 
rium between them would be preserved ; and the only suf- 
ferer would be a' mischievous and unprincipled buccaneer who 
deserved no tenderness from either. 

These doctrines, attractive from their novelty and ingenuity, 
soon became fashionable at the supper-parties and in the coffee- 
houses of Paris, and were espoused by every gay marquis and 
every facetious abbe who was admitted to see Madame de 
Pompadour's hair curled and powdered. It was not, how- 
ever, to any political theory that the strange coalition between 
France and Austria owed its origin. The real motive which 
induced the great Continental powers to forget their old ani- 
mosities and their old State maxims was personal aversion to 
the King of Prussia. This feeling was strongest in Maria 
Theresa ; but it was by no means confined to her. Frederic, 
in some respects a good master, was emphatically a bad neigh- 
bour. That he was hard in all dealings, and quick to take all 
advantages, was not his most odious fault. His bitter and scoff- 
ing speech had inflicted keener wounds than his ambition. In 
his character of wit he was under less restraint than even in 
his character of ruler. Satirical verses against all the princes 
and ministers of Europe were ascribed to his pen. In his 
letters and conversation he alluded to the greatest potentates 
of the age in terms which would have better suited Colle, in 
a war of repartee with young Crebillon at Pelletier's table, 
than a great sovereign speaking of great sovereigns. About 



256 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

women he was in the habit of expressing himself in a manner 
which it was impossible for the meekest of women to forgive ; 
and, unfortunately for him, almost the whole Continent was 
then governed by women who were by no means conspicuous 
for meekness. Maria Theresa herself had not escaped his 
scurrilous jests. The Empress Elizabeth of Russia knew that 
her gallantries afforded him a favourite theme for ribaldry and 
invective. Madame de Pompadour, who was really the head 
of the French Government, had been even more keenly galled. 
She had attempted, by the most delicate flattery, to propitiate 
the King of Prussia ; but her messages had drawn from him 
only dry and sarcastic replies. The Empress Queen took a 
very different course. Though the haughtiest of princesses, 
though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst 
for revenge both -the dignity of her race and the purity of her 
character, and condescended to flatter the low-born and low- 
minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by prosti- 
tuting herself, retained it by prostituting others. Maria Theresa 
actually wrote with her own hand a'note, full of expressions of 
esteem and friendship, to her dear cousin, the daughter of the 
butcher Poisson, the wife of the publican D'Etioles, the kid- 
napper of young girls for the harem of an old rake — a strange 
cousin for the descendant of so many Emperors of the West ! 
The mistress was completely gained over, and easily carried her 
point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. 
His feelings were not quick ; but contempt, says the Eastern prov- 
erb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise ; and neither 
prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from ex- 
pressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, 
and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join 
the coalition ; and the example of France determined the con- 
duct of Sweden, then completely subject to French influence. 

The enemies of Frederic were surely strong enough to attack 
him openly ; but they were desirous to add to all their other 
advantages the advantage of a surprise. He was not, however, 
a man to be taken off his guard. He had tools in every Court ; 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 257 

and he now received from Vienna, from Dresden, and from 
Paris, accounts so circumstantial and so consistent that he 
could not doubt of his danger. He learnt that he was to be 
assailed at once by France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, 
and the Germanic body ; that the greater part of his dominions 
was to be portioned out among his enemies ; that France, 
which from her geographical position could not directly share 
in his spoils, was to receive an equivalent in the Netherlands ; 
that Austria was to have Silesia, and the Czarina East Prus- 
sia ; that Augustus of Saxony expected Magdeburg ; and that 
Sweden would be rewarded with part of Pomerania. If these 
designs succeeded, the House of Brandenburg would at once 
sink in the European system to a place lower than that of the 
Duke of Wiirtemberg or the Margrave of Baden. 

And what hope was there that these designs would fail ? 
No such union of the continental powers had been seen for 
ages. A less formidable confederacy had in a week conquered 
all the provinces of Venice, when Venice was at the height of 
power, wealth, and glory. A less formidable confederacy had 
compelled Louis the Fourteenth to bow down his haughty 
head to the very earth. A less formidable confederacy has, 
within our own memory, subjugated a still mightier empire 
and abased a still prouder name. Such odds had never been 
heard of in war. The people whom Frederic ruled were not 
five millions. The population of the countries which were 
leagued against him amounted to a hundred millions. The dis- 
proportion in wealth was at least equally great. Small commu- 
nities, actuated by strong sentiments of patriotism or loyalty, 
have sometimes made head against great monarchies weakened 
by factions and discontents. But small as was Frederic's king- 
dom, it probably contained a greater number of disaffected 
subjects than were to be found in all the states of his enemies. 
Silesia formed a fourth part of his dominions ; and from the 
Silesians, born under Austrian princes, the utmost that he 
could expect was apathy. From the Silesian Catholics he could 
hardly expect anything but resistance. 



258 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Some states have been enabled by their geographical posi- 
tion to defend themselves with advantage against immense 
force. The sea has repeatedly protected England against the 
fury of the whole Continent. The Venetian Government, driven 
from its possessions on the land, could still bid defiance to the 
confederates of Cambray from the Arsenal amidst the lagoons. 
More than one great and well-appointed army, which regarded 
the shepherds of Switzerland as an easy prey, has perished in 
the passes of the Alps. Frederic had no such advantage. The 
form of his states, their situation, the nature of the ground, 
all were against him. His long, scattered, straggling territory 
seemed to have been shaped with an express view to the con- 
venience of invaders, and was protected by no sea, by no chain 
of hills. Scarcely any corner of it was a week's march from 
the territory of the enemy. The capital itself, in the event of 
war, would be constantly exposed to insult. In truth, there was 
hardly a politician or a soldier in Europe who doubted that 
the conflict would be terminated in a very few days by the 
prostration of the House of Brandenburg. 

Nor was Frederic's own opinion very different. He antici- 
pated nothing short of his own ruin, and of the ruin of his 
family. Yet there was still a chance, a slender chance, of 
escape. His states had at least the advantage of a central 
position ; his enemies were widely separated from each other, 
and could not conveniently unite their overwhelming forces 
on one point. They inhabited different climates, and it was 
probable that the season of the year which would be best 
suited to the military operations of one portion of the League 
would be unfavourable to those of another portion. The Prus- 
sian monarchy, too, was free from some infirmities which were 
found in empires far more extensive and magnificent. Its 
effective strength for a desperate struggle was not to be meas- 
ured merely by the number of square miles or the number of 
people. In that spare but well-knit and well-exercised body 
there was nothing but sinew and muscle and bone. No pub- 
lic creditors looked for dividends. No distant colonies required 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 259 

defence. No Court filled with flatterers and mistresses de- 
voured the pay of fifty battalions. The Prussian army, though 
far inferior in number to the troops which were about to be 
opposed to it, was yet strong out of all proportion to the ex- 
tent of the Prussian dominions. It was also admirably trained 
and admirably officered, accustomed to obey and accustomed 
to conquer. The revenue was not only unincumbered by debt, 
but exceeded the ordinary outlay in time of peace. Alone of 
all the European princes, Frederic had a treasure laid up for 
a day of difficulty. Above all, he was one, and his enemies 
were many. In their camps would certainly be found the 
jealousy, the dissension, the slackness inseparable from coali- 
tions ; on his side was the energy, the unity, the secrecy of 
a strong dictatorship. To a certain extent the deficiency of 
military means might be supplied by the resources of military 
art. Small as the King's army was, when compared with the 
six hundred thousand men whom the confederates could bring 
into the field, celerity of movement might in some degree 
compensate for deficiency of bulk. It was thus just possible 
that genius, judgment, resolution, and good luck united might 
protract the struggle during a campaign or two ; and to gain 
even a month was of importance. It could not be long before 
the vices which are found in all extensive confederacies would 
begin to show themselves. Every member of the League 
would think his own share of the war too large, and his own 
share of the spoils too small. Complaints and recriminations 
would abound. The Turk might stir on the Danube ; the 
statesmen of France might discover the error which they had 
committed in abandoning the fundamental principles of their 
national policy. Above all, death might rid Prussia of its most 
formidable enemies. The war was the effect of the personal 
aversion with which three or four sovereigns regarded Frederic ; 
and the decease of any one of those sovereigns might produce 
a complete revolution in the state of Europe. 

In the midst of a horizon generally dark and stormy 
Frederic could discern one bright spot. The peace which 



26o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

had been concluded between England and France in 1748 
had been in Europe no more than an armistice, and had not 
even been an armistice in the other quarters of the globe. In 
India the sovereignty of the Carnatic was disputed between 
two great Mussulman houses ; Fort Saint George had taken 
one side, Pondicherry the other ; and in a series of battles 
and sieges the troops of Lawrence and Clive had been opposed 
to those of Dupleix. A struggle less important in its conse- 
quences, but not less likely to produce irritation, was carried 
on between those French and English adventurers who kid- 
napped negroes and collected gold dust on the coast of Guinea. 
But it was in North America that the emulation and mutual 
aversion of the two nations were most conspicuous. The French 
attempted to hem in the English colonists by a chain of mili- 
tary posts, extending from the Great Lakes to the mouth of 
the Mississippi. The English took arms. The wdld aboriginal 
tribes appeared on each side mingled with the pale-faces. 
Battles were fought ; forts were stormed ; and hideous stories 
about stakes, scalpings, and death-songs reached Europe, and 
inflamed that national animosity which the rivalry of ages had 
produced. The disputes between France and England came 
to a crisis at the very time when the tempest which had been 
gathering was about to burst on Prussia. The tastes and inter- 
ests of Frederic would have led him, if he had been allowed 
an option, to side with the House of Bourbon, But the folly 
of the Court of Versailles left him no choice. France became 
the tool of Austria ; and Frederic was forced to become the 
ally of England. He could not, indeed, expect that a power 
which covered the sea with its fleets, and which had to make 
war at once on the Ohio and the Ganges, would be able to 
spare a large number of troops for operations in Germany. 
But England, though poor compared with the England of 
our time, was far richer than any country on the Continent. 
The amount of her revenue and the resources which she 
found in her credit, though they may be thought small by a 
generation which has seen her raise a hundred and thirty 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 261 

millions in a single year, appeared miraculous to the politi- 
cians of that age. A very moderate portion of her wealth, ex- 
pended by an able and economical prince, in a country where 
prices were low, would be sufficient to equip and maintain a 
formidable army. 

Such was the situation in which Frederic found himself. 
He saw the whole extent of his peril. He saw that there was 
still a faint possibility of escape ; and, with prudent temerity, 
he determined to strike the first blow. It was in the month 
of August, 1756, that the great war of the Seven Years com- 
menced. The King demanded of the Empress Queen a 
distinct explanation of her intentions, and plainly told her 
that he should consider a refusal as a declaration of war. 
" I want," he said, " no answer in the style of an oracle." 
He received an answer at once haughty and evasive. In an 
instant the rich electorate of Saxony was overflowed by sixty 
thousand Prussian troops. Augustus with his army occupied 
a strong position at Pirna. The Queen of Poland was at 
Dresden. In a few days Pirna was blockaded and Dresden 
was taken. The first object of Frederic was to obtain posses- 
sion of the Saxon State papers ; for those papers, he well 
knew, contained ample proofs that, though apparently an 
aggressor, he was really acting in self-defence. The Queen of 
Poland, as well acquainted as Frederic with the importance of 
those documents, had packed them up, had concealed them in 
her bedchamber, and was about to send them off to Warsaw, 
when a Prussian officer made his appearance. In the hope 
that no soldier would venture to outrage a lady, a queen, a 
daughter of an emperor, the mother-in-law of a dauphin, she 
placed herself before the trunk, and at length sat down on it. 
But all resistance was vain. The papers were carried to 
Frederic, who found in them, as he expected, abundant 
evidence of the designs of the coalition. The most important 
documents were instantly published, and the effect of the 
publication was great. It was clear that, of whatever sins the 
King of Prussia might formerly have been guilty, he was 



262 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

now the injured party, and had merely anticipated a blow 
intended to destroy him. 

The Saxon camp at Pirna was in the meantime closely 
invested ; but the besieged were not without hopes of succour. 
A great Austrian army under Marshal Brown was about to 
pour through the passes which separate Bohemia from 
Saxony. Frederic left at Pirna a force sufficient to deal with 
the Saxons, hastened into Bohemia, encountered Brown at 
L.owositz, and defeated him. This battle decided the fate of 
Saxony, Augustus and his favourite Bruhl fled to Poland. 
The whole army of the Electorate capitulated. From that 
time till the end of the war, Frederic treated Saxony as a part 
of his dominions, or, rather, he acted towards the Saxons in 
a manner which may serve to illustrate the whole meaning of 
that tremendous sentence, " subjectos tanquam suos, viles 
tanquam alienos." Saxony was as much in his power as 
Brandenburg ; and he had no such interest in the welfare of 
Saxony as he had in the welfare of Brandenburg. He accord- 
ingly levied troops and exacted contributions throughout the 
enslaved province with far more rigour than in any part of his 
own dominions. Seventeen thousand men who had been in the 
camp at Pirna were half compelled, half persuaded, to enlist 
under their conqueror. Thus, within a few weeks from the 
commencement of hostilities, one of the confederates had been 
disarmed, and his weapons were now pointed against the rest. 

The winter put a stop to military operations. All had 
hitherto gone well. But the real tug of war was still to come. 
It was easy to foresee that the year 1757 would be a memo- 
rable era in the history of Europe. 

The King's scheme for the campaign was simple, bold, 
and judicious. The Duke of Cumberland with an English and 
Hanoverian army was in Western Germany, and might be 
able to prevent the French troops from attacking Prussia. 
The Russians, confined by their snows, would probably not 
stir till the spring was far advanced. Saxony was prostrated. 
Sweden could do nothing very important. During a few 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 263 

months Frederic would have to deal with Austria alone. 
Even thus the odds were against him. But ability and courage 
have often triumphed against odds still more formidable. , 

Early in 1757 the Prussian army in Saxony began to move. 
Through four defiles in the mountains they came pouring into 
Bohemia. Prague was the King's first mark ; but the ulterior 
object was probably Vienna. At Prague lay Marshal Brown 
with one great army. Daun, the most cautious and fortunate of 
the Austrian captains, was advancing with another. Frederic 
determined to overwhelm Brown before Daun should arrive. 
On the sixth of May was fought, under those walls which, a 
hundred and thirty years before, had witnessed the victory of 
the Catholic league and the flight of the unhappy Palatine, a 
battle more bloody than any which Europe saw during the 
long interval between Malplaquet and Eylau. The King and 
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick were distinguished on that 
day by their valour and exertions. But the chief glory was 
with Schwerin. When the Prussian infantry wavered, the 
stout old Marshal snatched the colours from an ensign, and, 
waving them in the air, led back his regiment to the charge. 
Thus at seventy-two years of age he fell in the thickest 
battle, still grasping the standard which bears the black eagle 
on the field argent. The victory remained with the King ; 
but it had been dearly purchased. Whole columns of his 
bravest warriors had fallen. He admitted that he had lost 
eighteen thousand men. Of the enemy, twenty-four thousand 
had been killed, wounded, or taken. 

Part of the defeated army was shut up in Prague. Part 
fled to join the troops which, under the command of Daun, 
were now close at hand. Frederic determined to play over the 
same game which had succeeded at Lowositz. He left a large 
force to besiege Prague, and at the head of thirty thousand 
men he marched against Daun. The cautious Marshal, though 
he had a great superiority in numbers, would risk nothing. 
He occupied at Kolin a position almost impregnable, and 
awaited the attack of the King. 



264 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

It was the eighteenth of June, a day which, if the Greek 
superstition still retained its influence, would be held sacred to 
Nemesis — a day on which the two greatest princes of modern 
times were taught by a terrible experience that neither skill 
nor valour can fix the inconstancy of fortune. The battle 
began before noon, and part of the Prussian army maintained 
the contest till after the midsummer sun had gone down. 
But at length the King found that his troops, having been 
repeatedly driven back with frightful carnage, could no longer 
be led to the charge. He was with dilficulty persuaded to 
quit the field. The officers of his personal staff were under 
the necessity of expostulating with him, and one of them took 
the liberty to say, " Does your Majesty mean to storm the 
batteries alone ? " Thirteen thousand of his bravest followers 
had perished. NxDthing remained for him but to retreat in 
good order, to raise the siege of Prague, and to hurry his 
army by different routes out of Bohemia. 

This stroke seemed to be final. Frederic's situation had at 
best been such that only an uninterrupted run of good luck 
could save him, as it seemed, from ruin. And now, almost 
in the outset of the contest, he had met with a check which, 
even in a war between equal powers, would have been felt as 
serious. He had owed much to the opinion which all Europe 
entertained of his army. Since his accession, his soldiers had 
in many successive battles been victorious over the Austrians. 
But the glory had departed from his arms. All whom his 
malevolent sarcasms had wounded made haste to avenge them- 
selves by scoffing at the scoffer. His soldiers had ceased to 
confide in his star. In every part of his camp his disposi- 
tions were severely criticized. Even in his own family he had 
detractors. His next brother, William, heir presumptive, or 
rather, in truth, heir apparent to the throne, and great-grand- 
father of the present King, could not refrain from lamenting 
his own fate and that of the House of Hohenzollern, once so 
great and so prosperous, but now, by the rash ambition of its 
chief, made a by-word to all nations. These complaints, and 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 265 

some blunders which Wilham committed during the retreat 
from Bohemia, called forth the bitter displeasure of the inex- 
orable King. The prince's heart was broken by the cutting 
reproaches of his brother ; he quitted the army, retired to a 
country seat, and in a short time died of shame and vexation. 

It seemed that the King's distress' could hardly be increased. 
Yet at this moment another blow not less terrible than that of 
Kolin fell upon him. The French under Marshal D'Estrees 
had invaded Germany. The Duke of Cumberland had given 
them battle at Hastembeck and had been defeated. In order 
to save the Electorate of Hanover from entire subjugation, he 
had made at Closter Seven an arrangement with the French 
Generals which left them at liberty to turn their arms against 
the Prussian dominions. 

That nothing might be wanting to Frederic's distress he 
lost his mother just at this time ; and he appears to have felt 
the loss more than was to be expected from the hardness and 
severity of his character. In truth, his misfortunes had now 
cut to the quick. The mocker, the tyrant, the most rigorous, 
the most imperious, the most cynical of men, was very un- 
happy. His face was so haggard and his form so thin that 
when, on'his return from Bohemia, he passed through Leipsic 
the people hardly knew him again. His sleep was broken ; 
the tears, in spite of himself, often started into his eyes ; and 
the grave began to present itself to his agitated mind as the 
best refuge from misery and dishonour. His resolution was 
fixed never to be taken alive, and never to make peace on 
condition of descending from his place among the powers of 
Europe. He saw nothing left for him except to die ; and he 
deliberately chose his mode of death. He always carried about 
with him a sure and speedy poison in a small glass case ; and 
to the few in whom he placed confidence he made no mystery 
of his resolution. 

But we should very imperfectly describe the state of Frederic's 
mind if we left out of view the laughable peculiarities which 
contrasted so singularly with the gravity, energy, and harshness 



266 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of his character. It is difficult to say whether the tragic or 
the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then 
acting. In the midst of all the great King's calamities, his pas- 
sion for writing indifferent poetry grew stronger and stronger. 
Enemies all round him, despair in his heart, pills of corrosive 
sublimate hidden in his* clothes, he poured forth hundreds 
upon hundreds of lines, hateful to gods and men, the insipid 
dregs of Voltaire's Hippocrene, the faint echo of the lyre of 
Chaulieu. It is amusing to compare what he did during the 
last months of 1757 with what he wrote during the same time. 
It may be doubted whether any equal portion of the life of 
Hannibal, of Caesar, or of Napoleon, will bear a comparison 
with that short period, the most brilliant in the history of 
Prussia and of Frederic. Yet at this very time the scanty 
leisure of the illustrious warrior was employed in producing 
odes and epistles a little better than Gibber's and a little 
worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which 
deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with 
Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive 
Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery 
which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting- 
woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to 
mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and 
weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as 
the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue- 
stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against 
a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and 
a quire of bad verses in the other. 

Frederic had some time before made advances towards a 
reconciliation with Voltaire ; and some civil letters had passed 
bet\veen them. After the battle of Kolin their epistolary 
intercourse became, at least in seeming, friendly and confiden- 
tial. We do not know any collection of Letters which throws 
so much light on the darkest and most intricate parts of human 
nature, as the correspondence of these strange beings after 
they had exchanged forgiveness. Both felt that the quarrel 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 267 

had lowered them in the pubhc estimation. They admired 
each other. They stood in need of each other. The great 
King wished to be handed down to posterity by the great 
Writer. The great Writer felt himself exalted by the homage 
of the great King. Yet the wounds which they had inflicted 
on each other were too deep to be effaced, or even perfectly 
healed. Not only did the scars remain ; the sore places often 
festered and bled afresh. The letters consisted for the most 
part of compliments, thanks, offers of service, assurances of 
attachment. But if anything brought back to Frederic's recol- 
lection the cunning and mischievous pranks by which Voltaire 
had provoked him, some expression of contempt and dis- 
pleasure broke forth in the midst of eulogy. It was much 
worse when anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the out- 
rages which he and his kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort. 
All at once his flowing panegyric was turned into invective. 
" Remember how you behaved to me. For your sake I have 
lost the favour of my native King. For your sake I am an 
exile from my country. I loved you. I trusted myself to you. 
I had no wish but to end my life in your service. And what 
was my reward ? Stripped of all that you had bestowed on 
me, the key, the order, the pension, I was forced to fly from 
your territories. I was hunted as if I had been a deserter 
from your grenadiers. I was arrested, insulted, plundered. My 
niece was dragged through the mud of Frankfort by your 
soldiers, as if she had been some wretched follower of your 
camp. You have great talents. You have good qualities. But 
you have one odious vice. You delight in the abasement of 
your fellow-creatures. You have brought disgrace on the name 
of philosopher. You have given some colour to the slanders 
of the bigots, who say that no confidence can be placed in the 
justice or humanity of those who reject the Christian faith." 
Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity, 
" You know that you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was 
well for you that you had to deal with a man so indulgent to 
the infirmities of genius as I am. You richly deserved to see 



268 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the inside of a dungeon. Your talents are not more widely 
known than your faithlessness and your malevolence. The 
grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead ; 
but you still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you 
had not made him miserable enough while he was living. Let 
us have no more of this. And above all, let me hear no 
more of your niece, I am sick to death of her name, I can 
bear with your faults for the sake of your merits ; but she has 
not written Mahomet or Merope!' 

An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would 
necessarily put an end to all amicable communication. But it 
was not so. After every outbreak of ill humour this extraor- 
dinary pair became more loving than before, and exchanged 
compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a wonderful 
air of sincerity. - 

It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each 
other were not very guarded in what they said of each other. 
The English ambassador, Mitchell, who knew that the King of 
Prussia was constantly writing to Voltaire with the greatest 
freedom on the most important subjects, was amazed to hear 
his Majesty designate this highly favoured correspondent as a 
bad-hearted fellow, the greatest rascal on the face of the 
earth. And the language which the poet held about the King 
was not much more respectful. 

It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what 
was his real feeling towards Frederic. It was compounded of 
all sentiments from enmity to friendship and from scorn to 
admiration ; and the proportions in which these elements were 
mixed, changed every moment. The old patriarch resembled 
the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, 
and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment 
was not extinguished ; yet he was not without sympathy for 
his old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished success to the 
arms of his country. As a philosopher, he was anxious for 
the stability of a throne on which a philosopher sat. He 
longed both to save and to humble Frederic. There was one 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 269 

way, and only one, in which all his conflicting feelings could 
at once be gratified. If Frederic were preserved by the inter- 
ference of France, if it were known that for that interference 
he was indebted to the mediation of Voltaire, this would 
indeed be delicious revenge ; this would indeed be to heap 
coals of fire on that haughty head. Nor did the vain and 
restless poet think it impossible that he might, from his 
hermitage near the Alps, dictate peace to Europe. D'Estrees 
had quitted Hanover and the command of the French army 
had been intrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose 
chief distinction was derived from his success in gallantry. 
Richelieu was in truth the most eminent of that race of 
seducers by profession who furnished Crebillon the younger 
and Laclos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days 
the royal house itself had not been secure from his presump- 
tuous love. He was believed to have carried his conquests 
into the family of Orleans ; and some suspected that he was 
not unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered 
the last hours of the charming mother of Louis the Fifteenth. 
But the Duke was now sixty years old. With a heart deeply 
corrupted by vice, a head long accustomed to think only on 
trifles, an impaired constitution, an impaired fortune, and, 
worst of all, a very red nose, he was entering on a dull, 
frivolous, and unrespected old age. Without one qualification 
for military command, except that personal courage which was 
common between him and the whole nobility of France, he 
had been placed at the head of the army of Hanover ; and 
in that situation he did his best to repair, by extortion and 
corruption, the injury which he had done to his property by 
a life of dissolute profusion. 

The Duke of Richelieu to the end of his life hated the 
philosophers as a sect, not for those parts of their system 
which a good and wise man would have condemned, but for 
their virtues, for their spirit of free inquiry, and for their 
hatred of those social abuses of which he was himself the 
personification. But he, like many of those who thought with 



270 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

him, excepted Voltaire from the hst of proscribed writers. 
He frequently sent flattering letters to Ferney. He did the 
patriarch the honour to borrow money of him, and even 
carried this condescending friendship so far as to forget to 
pay the interest. Voltaire thought that it might be in his 
power to bring the Duke and the King of Prussia into com- 
munication with each other. He wrote earnestly to both ; and 
he so far succeeded that a correspondence between them was 
commenced. 

But it was to very different means that Frederic was to owe 
his deliverance. At the beginning of November, the net 
seemed to have closed completely round him. The Russians 
were in the field, and were spreading devastation through his 
eastern provinces, Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A 
great French army was advancing from the west under the 
command of Marshal Soubise, a prince of the great Armorican 
house of Rohan. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered 
by the Croatians. Such was the situation from which Frederic 
extricated himself with dazzling glory in the short space of 
thirty days. 

He marched first against Soubise. On the fifth of Novem- 
ber the armies met at Rossbach. The French were two to one ; 
but they were ill-disciplined, and their general was a dunce. 
The tactics of Frederic and the well-regulated valour of the 
Prussian troops obtained a complete victory. Seven thousand 
of the invaders were made prisoners. Their guns, their 
colours, their baggage, fell into the hands of the conquerors. 
Those who escaped fled as confusedly as a mob scattered by 
cavalry. Victorious in the West, the King turned his arms 
towards Silesia. In that quarter everything seemed to be lost. 
Breslau had fallen ; and Charles of Lorraine, with a mighty 
power, held the whole province. On the fifth of December, 
exactly one month after the battle of Rossbach, Frederic, with 
forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, at the head of not 
less than sixty thousand, met at Leuthen, hard by Breslau. 
The King, who was, in general, perhaps too much inclined to 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 271 

consider the common soldier as a mere machine, resorted, on 
this great day, to means resembling those which Bonaparte 
afterwards employed with such signal success for the purpose 
of stimulating military enthusiasm. The principal officers were 
convoked. Frederic addressed them with great force and 
pathos ; and directed them to speak to their men as he had 
spoken to them. When the armies were set in battle array, 
the Prussian troops were in a state of fierce excitement ; but 
their excitement showed itself after the fashion of a grave 
people. The columns advanced to the attack chanting, to the 
sound of drums and fifes, the rude hymns of the old Saxon 
Sternholds. They had never fought so well ; nor had the 
genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous. " That battle," 
said Napoleon, "was a masterpiece. Of itself it is sufficient 
to entitle Frederic to a place in the first rank among generals." 
The victory was complete. Twenty-seven thousand Austrians 
were killed, wounded, or taken ; fifty stand of colours, a hun- 
dred guns, four thousand waggons, fell into the hands of the 
Prussians. Breslau opened its gates ; Silesia was reconquered ; 
Charles of Lorraine retired to hide his shame and sorrow at 
Brussels ; and Frederic allowed his troops to take some repose 
in winter-quarters, after a campaign to the vicissitudes of 
which it will be difficult to find any parallel in ancient or 
modern history. 

The King's fame filled all the world. He had during the 
last year maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against 
three powers, the weakest of which had more than three 
times his resources. He had fought four great pitched battles 
against superior forces. Three of these battles he had gained ; 
and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as it had been, rather raised 
than lowered his military renown. The victory of Leuthen is, 
to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian fame. Leipsic, 
indeed, and Waterloo produced consequences more important 
to mankind. But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by the 
Prussians with the Austrians and Russians ; and at Waterloo 
the British infantry bore the burden and heat of the day. 



2/2 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

The victory of Rossbach was, in a military point of view, less 
honourable than that of Leuthen ; for it was gained over an 
incapable general and a disorganized army ; but the moral 
effect which it produced was immense. All the preceding 
triumphs of Frederic had been triumphs over Germans, and 
could excite no emotions of national pride among the German 
people. It was impossible that a Hessian or a Hanoverian 
could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that Pomeranians 
had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had been 
hung in the churches of Berlin. Indeed, though the military 
character of the Germans justly stood high throughout the 
world, they could boast of no great day which belonged to 
them as a people ; of no Agincourt, of no Bannockburn. 
Most of their victories had been gained over each other ; 
and their most splendid exploits against foreigners had been 
achieved under the command of Eugene, who was himself a 
foreigner. The news of the battle of Rossbach stirred the 
blood of the whole of the mighty population from the Alps 
to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland to those of 
Lorraine, Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged 
by a great host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, 
and whose petulant and licentious manners had excited the 
strongest feelings of disgust and hatred. That great host had 
been put to flight by a small band of German warriors, led by 
a prince of German blood on the side of father and mother, 
and marked by the fair hair and the clear blue eye of Germany. 
Never since the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne 
had the Teutonic race won such a field against the French. 
The tidings called forth a general burst of delight and pride 
from the whole of the great family which spoke the various 
dialects of the ancient language of Arminius. The fame of 
Frederic began to supply, in some degree, the place of a com- 
mon government and of a common capital. It became a rallying 
point for all true Germans, a subject of mutual congratulation 
to the Bavarian and the Westphalian, to the citizen of Frank- 
fort and the citizen of Nuremberg. Then first it was manifest 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 273 

that the Germans were truly a nation. Then first was discernible 
that patriotic spirit which in 18 13 achieved the great deliver- 
ance of central Europe, and which still guards, and long will 
guard, against foreign ambition the old freedom of the Rhine. 
Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day 
merely political. The greatest masters of German poetry and 
eloquence have admitted that, though the great King neither 
valued nor understood his native language, though he looked 
on France as the only seat of taste and philosophy, yet, in 
his own despite, he did much to emancipate the genius of his 
countrymen from the foreign yoke ; and that in the act of 
vanquishing Soubise he was unintentionally rousing the spirit 
which soon began to question the literary precedence of 
Boileau and Voltaire. So strangely do events confound all the 
plans of man. A prince who read only French, who wrote 
only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became, 
quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent 
from the dominion of that French criticism of which he was 
himself, to the end of his life, a slave. Yet even the enthu- 
siasm of Germany in favour of Frederic hardly equalled the 
enthusiasm of England. The birthday of our ally was cele- 
brated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own sovereign ; 
and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with 
illuminations. Portraits of the Hero of Rossbach, with his 
cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An atten- 
tive observer will at this day find in the parlours of old- 
fashioned inns and in the portfolios of print-sellers twenty 
portraits of Frederic for one of George the Second. The 
sign-painters were everywhere employed in touching up 
Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia. This enthusiasm 
was strong among religious people, and especially among the 
Methodists, who knew that the French and Austrians were 
Papists, and supposed Frederic to be the Joshua or Gideon 
of the Reformed Faith. One of Whitefield's hearers, on the 
day on which thanks for the battle of Leuthen were returned 
at the Tabernacle, made the following exquisitely ludicrous 



274 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

entry in a diary, part of which has come down to us : " The 
Lord stirred up the King of Prussia and his soldiers to pray. 
They kept three fast days, and spent about an hour praying 
and singing psalms before they engaged the enemy. O ! how 
good it is to pray and fight ! " Some young Englishmen of 
rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose 
of learning the art of war under the greatest of commanders. 
This last proof of British attachment and admiration Frederic 
politely but firmly declined. His camp was no place for 
amateur students of military science. The Prussian discipline 
was rigorous even to cruelty. The officers, while in the field, 
were expected to practise an abstemiousness and self-denial 
such as was hardly surpassed by the most rigid monastic 
orders. However noble their birth, however high their rank 
in the service, they were not permitted to eat from anything 
better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and 
field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage. 
Gay young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year, accustomed 
to liberty and to luxury, would not easily submit to these Spar- 
tan restraints. The King could not venture to keep them in 
order as he kept his own subjects in order. Situated as he 
was with respect to England, he could not well imprison or 
shoot refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other 
hand, the example of a few fine gentlemen, attended by 
chariots and livery servants, eating in plates, and drinking 
champagne and Tokay, was enough to cormpt his whole army. 
He thought it best to make a stand at first, and civilly refused 
to admit such dangerous companions among his troops. 

The help of England was bestowed in a manner far more 
useful and more acceptable. An annual subsidy of near seven 
hundred thousand pounds enabled the King to add probably 
more than fifty thousand men to his army. Pitt, now at the 
height of power and popularity, undertook the task of defend- 
ing Western Germany against France, and asked Frederic only 
for the loan of a general. The general selected was Prince 
Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had attained high distinction 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 275 

in the Prussian service. He was put at the head of an army 
partly EngUsh, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of merce- 
naries hired from the petty princes of the empire. He soon 
vindicated the choice of the two allied Courts, and proved 
himself the second general of the age. 

Frederic passed the winter at Breslau in reading, writing, 
and preparing for the next campaign. The havoc which the 
war had made among his troops was rapidly repaired ; and in 
the spring of 1758 he was again ready for the conflict. 
Prince Ferdinand kept the French in check. The King in 
the meantime, after attempting against the Austrians some 
operations which led to no very important result, marched to 
encounter the Russians, who, slaying, burning, and wasting 
wherever they turned, had penetrated into the heart of his 
realm. He gave them battle at Zorndorf, near Frankfort-on- 
the-Oder. The fight was long and bloody. Quarter was 
neither given nor taken ; for the Germans and Scythians 
regarded each other with bitter aversion, and the sight of the 
ravages committed by the half savage invaders had incensed 
the King and his army. The Russians were overthrown with 
great slaughter ; and for a few months no further danger was 
to be apprehended from the east. 

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the King, and 
was celebrated with pride and delight by his people. The 
rejoicings in England were not less enthusiastic or less sin- 
cere. This may be selected as the point of time at which the 
military glory of Frederic reached the zenith. In the short 
space of three quarters of a year he had won three great bat- 
tles over the armies of three mighty and warlike monarchies — 
France, Austria, and Russia. 

But it was decreed that the temper of that strong mind 
should be tried by both extremes of fortune in rapid succes- 
sion. Close upon this series of triumphs came a series of 
disasters such as would have blighted the fame and broken 
the heart of almost any other commander. Yet Frederic, in 
the midst of his calamities, was still an object of admiration 



276 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to his subjects, his alHes, and his enemies. Overwhelmed by 
adversity, sick of hfe, he still maintained the contest, greater 
in defeat, in flight, and in what seemed hopeless ruin than on 
the fields of his proudest victories. 

Having vanquished the Russians, he hastened into Saxony 
to oppose the troops of the Empress Queen, commanded by 
Daun, the most cautious, and Laudohn, the most inventive 
and enterprising, of her generals. These two celebrated com- 
manders agreed on a scheme in which the prudence of the 
one and the vigour of the other seem to have been happily 
combined. At dead of night they surprised the King in his 
camp at Hochkirchen. His presence of mind saved his troops 
from destruction ; but nothing could save them from defeat 
and severe loss. Marshal Keith was among the slain. The 
first roar of the guns roused the noble exile from his rest, 
and he was instantly in the front of the battle. He received 
a dangerous wound, but refused to quit the field, and was in 
the act of rallying his broken troops, when an Austrian bullet 
terminated his chequered and eventful life. 

The misfortune was serious. But of all generals Frederic 
understood best how to repair defeat, and Daun understood 
least how to improve victory. In a few days the Prussian 
army was as formidable as before the battle. The prospect 
was, however, gloomy. An Austrian army under General 
Harsch had invaded Silesia and invested the fortress of 
Neisse. Daun, after his success at Hochkirchen, had written 
to Harsch in very confident terms : " Go on with your 
operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as to the King. 
I will give a good account of him." In truth, the position of 
the Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and 
Silesia lay the victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for 
them to reach Silesia at all. If they did reach it, they left 
Saxony exposed to the Austrians. But the vigour and activity 
of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He made a circuitous 
march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun, hastened into 
Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch into 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 277 

Bohemia. Daun availed himself of the King's absence to 
attack Dresden. The Prussians defended it desperately. The 
inhabitants of that wealthy and polished capital begged in vain 
for mercy from the garrison within and from the besiegers 
without. The beautiful suburbs were burned to the ground. 
It was clear that the town, if won at all, would be won street 
by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture came news 
that Frederic, having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was 
returning by forced marches into Saxony. Daun retired from 
before Dresden, and fell back into the Austrian territories. 
The King, over heaps of ruins, made his triumphant entry 
into the unhappy metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated 
the weak and perfidious policy of its sovereign. It was now 
the twentieth of November. The cold weather suspended 
military operations ; and the King again took up his winter- 
quarters at Breslau. 

The third of the seven terrible years was over; and 
Frederic still stood his ground. He had been recently tried by 
domestic as well as by military disasters. On the fourteenth of 
October, the day on which he was defeated at Hochkirchen — 
the day on the anniversary of which, forty-eight years later, a 
defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian monarchy in 
the dust — died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Bareuth. From the 
accounts which we have of her, by her own hand and by the 
hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we 
should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a 
good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. 
Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly 
cultivated ; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic's 
favourite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron 
nature to feel the loss of anything but a province or a battle. 

At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his 
poetical labours. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he 
ever wrote, are to be found in a bitter lampoon on Louis and 
Madame de Pompadour which he composed at this time 
and sent to Voltaire. The verses were, indeed, so good, that 



2/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of 
having written them, or at least of having corrected them ; 
and partly from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, 
sent them to the Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of 
France. Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic 
at Frederic's own weapons, and applied for assistance to 
Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier and some little 
talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines 
on the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these 
lines the Duke sent to Voltaire. This war of couplets, follow- 
ing close on the carnage of Zorndorf and the conflagration of 
Dresden, illustrates well the strangely compounded character 
of the King of Prussia. 

At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict 
the Fourteenth,' the best and wisest of the two hundred and 
fifty successors of St. Peter, was no more. During the short 
interval between his reign and that of his disciple Ganganelli, 
the chief seat in the Church of Rome was filled by Rezzonico, 
who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth. This absurd 
priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could 
effect in favour of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a 
heretic king. At the high mass on Christmas-day, a sword 
with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet lined 
with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the mystic symbol of the 
Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme 
pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, 
the conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of 
favour had more than once been bestowed by the Popes on 
the great champions of the faith. Similar honours had been 
paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban the Second to 
Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honours had been conferred on 
Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on 
John Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the pres- 
ents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron 
of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had 
not wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 279 

appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read 
Montesquieu and Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on 
the gifts, the giver, and the receiver. But the public wanted 
no prompter ; and an universal roar of laughter from Peters- 
burg to Lisbon reminded the Vatican that the age of 
crusades was over. 

The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the cam- 
paigns of this fearful war, had now opened. The Austrians 
filled Saxony and menaced Berlin. The Russians defeated the 
King's generals on the Oder, threatened Silesia, effected a 
junction with Laudohn, and intrenched themselves strongly 
at Kunersdorf. Frederic hastened to attack them. A great 
battle was fought. During the earlier part of the day every- 
thing yielded to the impetuosity of the Prussians and to the 
skill of their chief. The lines were forced. Half the Russian 
guns were taken. The King sent off a courier to Berlin with 
two lines announcing a complete victory. But in the mean- 
time the stubborn Russians, defeated yet unbroken, had taken 
up their stand in an almost impregnable position on an 
eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury 
their dead. Here the battle recommenced. The Prussian 
infantry, exhausted by six hours of hard fighting under a sun 
which equalled the tropical heat, were yet brought up repeat- 
edly to the attack, but in vain. The King led three charges 
in person. Two horses were killed under him. The officers 
of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by several 
bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with 
frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to 
man. At that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still 
fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed an uni- 
versal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of falling into 
the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by 
a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, 
made a good diversion of a few minutes. Shattered in body, 
shattered in mind, the King reached that night a village 
which the Cossacks had plundered ; and there, in a ruined 



28o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and deserted farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw. 
He had sent to Berhn a second despatch very different from 
the first : " Let the royal family leave Berlin. Send the 
archives to Potsdam. The town may make terms with the 
enemy." 

The defeat was, in truth, overwhelming. Of fifty thousand 
men who had that morning marched under the black eagles, 
not three thousand remained together. The King bethought 
him again of his corrosive sublimate, and wrote to bid adieu 
to his friends, and to give directions as to the measures to 
be taken in the event of his death. " I have no resource 
left" — such is the language of one of his letters — "all is 
lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell 
for ever." 

But the mutual jealousies of the confederates prevented 
them from following up their victory. They lost a few days 
in loitering and squabbling ; and a few days improved by 
Frederic were worth more than the years of other men. On 
the morning after the battle he had got together eighteen 
thousand of his troops. Very soon his force amounted to 
thirty thousand. Guns were procured from the neighbouring 
fortresses ; and there was again an army, Berlin was for the 
present safe ; but calamities came pouring on the King in 
uninterrupted succession. One of his generals, with a large 
body of troops, was taken at Maxen ; another was defeated 
at Meissen ; and when at length the campaign of 17 59 closed, 
in the midst of a rigorous winter, the situation of Prussia 
appeared desperate. The only consoling circumstance was 
that, in the West, Ferdinand of Brunswick had been more 
fortunate than his master ; and by a series of exploits, of which 
the battle of Minden was the most glorious, had removed all 
apprehension of danger on the side of France. 

The fifth year was now about to commence. It seemed 
impossible that the Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated 
by hundreds of thousands of Invaders, could longer support 
the contest. But the King carried on war as no European 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 281 

power has ever carried on war, except the Committee of 
Public Safety during the great agony of the French Revolu- 
tion. He governed his kingdom as he would have governed 
a besieged town, not caring to what extent property was 
destroyed or the pursuits of civil life suspended, so that he 
did but make head against the enemy. As long as there was 
a man left in Prussia, that man might carry a musket ; as 
long as there was a horse left, that horse might draw artillery. 
The coin was debased, the civil functionaries were left unpaid ; 
in some provinces civil government altogether ceased to exist. 
But there were still rye-bread and potatoes ; there were still 
lead and gunpowder ; and while the means of sustaining and 
destroying life remained Frederic was determined to fight it 
out to the very last. 

The earlier part of the campaign of 1760 was unfavourable 
to him. Berlin was again occupied by the enemy. Great 
contributions were levied on the inhabitants, and the royal 
palace was plundered. But at length, after two years of 
calamity, victory came back to his arms. At Lignitz he 
gained a great battle over Laudohn ; at Torgau, after a day of 
horrible carnage, he triumphed over Daun. The fifth year 
closed, and still the event was in suspense. In the countries 
where the war had raged the misery and exhaustion were 
more appalling than ever ; but still there were left men and 
beasts, arms and food, and still Frederic fought on. In truth 
he had now been baited into savageness. His heart was 
ulcerated with hatred. The implacable resentment with which 
his enemies persecuted him, though originally provoked by 
his own unprincipled ambition, excited in him a thirst for 
vengeance which he did not even attempt to conceal. "It is 
hard," he says in one of his letters, "for a man to bear what 
I bear. I begin to feel tliat, as the Italians say, revenge is a 
pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by suffer- 
ing. I am no saint, like those of whom we read in the 
legends ; and I will own that I should die content if only I 
could first inflict a portion of the misery which I endure." 



282 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Borne up by such feelings, he struggled with various 
success, but constant glory, through the campaign of 1761. 
On the whole the result of this campaign was disastrous to 
Prussia. No great battle was gained by the enemy ; but, in 
spite of the desperate bounds of the hunted tiger, the circle 
of pursuers was fast closing round him. Laudohn had sur- 
prised the important fortress of Schweidnitz. With that 
fortress, half of Silesia, and the command of the most im- 
portant defiles through the mountains, had been transferred to 
the Austrians. The Russians had overpowered the King's 
generals in Pomerania. The country was so completely deso- 
lated that he began, by his own confession, to look round him 
with blank despair, unable to imagine where recruits, horses, 
or provisions were to be found. 

Just at this time two great events brought on a complete 
change in the relations of almost all the powers of Europe. 
One of those events was the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office ; 
the other was the death of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. 

The retirement of Pitt seemed to be an omen of utter ruin 
to the House of Brandenburg. His proud and vehement 
nature was incapable of anything that looked like either fear 
or treachery. He had often declared that while he was in 
power England should never make a peace of Utrecht ; should 
never, for any selfish object, abandon an ally even in the last 
extremity of distress. The Continental war was his own war. 
He had been bold enough — he who in former times had 
attacked with irresistible powers of oratory the Hanoverian 
policy of Carteret and the German subsidies of Newcastle — to 
declare that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, 
and that he would conquer America in Germany. He had 
fallen ; and the power which he had exercised, not always with 
discretion, but always with vigour and genius, had devolved on 
a favourite who was the representative of the Tory party — of 
the party which had thwarted William, which had persecuted 
Marlborough, which had given up the Catalans to the venge- 
ance of Philip of Anjou. To make peace with France, to 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 283 

shake off, with all, or more than all, the speed compatible with 
decency, every Continental connection — these were among 
the chief objects of the new Minister. The policy then fol- 
lowed inspired Frederic with an unjust but deep and bitter 
aversion to the English name, and produced effects which are 
still felt throughout the civilized world. To that policy it was 
owing that, some years later, England could not find on the 
whole Continent a single ally to stand by her, in her extreme 
need, against the House of Bourbon. To that policy it was 
owing that Frederic, alienated from England, was compelled to 
connect himself closely, during his later years, with Russia, 
and was induced to assist in that great crime, the fruitful 
parent of other great crimes, the first partition of Poland. 

Scarcely had the retreat of Mr. Pitt deprived Prussia of her 
only friend, when the death of Elizabeth produced an entire 
revolution in the politics of the North. The Grand Duke 
Peter, her nephew, who now ascended the Russian throne, was 
not merely free from the prejudices which his aunt had enter- 
tained against Frederic, but was a worshipper, a servile imitator 
of the great King. The days of the new Czar's government 
were few and evil, but sufficient to produce a change in the 
whole state of Christendom. He set the Prussian prisoners at 
liberty, fitted them out decently, and sent them back to their 
master ; he withdrew his troops from the provinces which 
Elizabeth had decided on incorporating with her dominions ; 
and he absolved all those Prussian subjects who had been 
compelled to swear fealty to Russia from their engagements. 

Not content with concluding peace on terms favourable to 
Prussia, he solicited rank in the Prussian service, dressed him- 
self in a Prussian uniform, wore the Black Eagle of Prussia 
on his breast, made preparations for visiting Prussia, in order 
to have an interview with the object of his idolatry, and actu- 
ally sent fifteen thousand excellent troops to reinforce the 
shattered army of Frederic. Thus strengthened, the King 
speedily repaired the losses of the preceding year, reconquered 
Silesia, defeated Daun at Buckersdorf, invested and retook 



284 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Schweidnitz, and at the close of the year presented to the 
forces of Maria Theresa a front as formidable as before the 
great reverses of 1759. Before the end of the campaign, his 
friend the Emperor Peter, having, by a series of absurd in- 
sults to the institutions, manners, and feelings of his people, 
united them in hostility to his person and government, was 
deposed and murdered. The Empress, who, under the title of 
Catherine the Second, now assumed the supreme power, was 
at the commencement of her administration by no means par- 
tial to Frederic, and refused to permit her troops to remain 
under his command. But she observed the peace made by 
her husband ; and Prussia was no longer threatened by danger 
from the East. 

England and France at the same time paired off together. 
They concluded, a treaty by which they bound themselves to 
observe neutrality with respect to the German war. Thus the 
coalitions on both sides were dissolved ; and the original ene- 
mies, Austria and Prussia, remained alone confronting each 
other. 

Austria had undoubtedly far greater means than Prussia, 
and was less exhausted by hostilities ; yet it seemed hardly 
possible that Austria could effect alone what she had in vain 
attempted to effect when supported by France on the one side, 
and by Russia on the other. Danger also began to menace 
the Imperial house from another quarter. The Ottoman Porte 
held threatening language, and a hundred thousand Turks 
were mustered on the frontiers of Hungary. The proud and 
revengeful spirit of the Empress Queen at length gave way ; 
and in February, 1763, the peace of Hubertsburg put an end 
to the conflict which had during seven years devastated Ger- 
many. The King ceded nothing. The whole Continent in 
arms had proved unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp. 

The war was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond 
the reach of envy. If he had not made conquests as vast as 
those of Alexander, of Caesar, and of Napoleon ; if he had not 
on fields of battle enjoyed the constant success of Marlborough 



FREDERIC THE GREAT 285 

and Wellington ; he had yet given an example unrivalled in 
history of what capacity and resolution can effect against the 
greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of fortune. 
He entered Berlin in triumph, after an absence of more than 
six years. The streets were brilliantly lighted up ; and, as he 
passed along in an open carriage with Ferdinand of Brunswick 
at his side, the multitude saluted him with loud praises and 
blessings. He was moved by those marks of attachment, and 
repeatedly exclaimed, " Long live my dear people ! Long live 
my children!" Yet, even in the midst of that gay spectacle, 
he could not but perceive everywhere the traces of destruction 
and decay. The city had been more than once plundered. The 
population had considerably diminished. Berlin, however, had 
suffered little when compared with most parts of the kingdom. 
The ruin of private fortunes, the distress of all ranks, was 
such as might appal the firmest mind. Almost every province 
had been the seat of war, and of war conducted with merciless 
ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had descended on Silesia, Tens 
of thousands of Cossacks had been let loose on Pomerania and 
Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied by the invaders 
amounted, it was said, to more than a hundred millions of 
dollars ; and the value of what they extorted was probably much 
less than the value of what they destroyed. The fields lay 
uncultivated. The very seed-corn had been devoured in the 
madness of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies pro- 
duced by famine, had swept away the herds and flocks ; and 
there was reason to fear that a great pestilence among the 
human race was likely to follow in the train of that tremen- 
dous war. Near fifteen thousand houses had been burned to 
the ground. The population of the kingdom had in seven 
years decreased to the frightful extent of ten per cent. A sixth 
of the males capable of bearing arms had actually perished 
on the field of battle. In some districts no labourers, except 
women, were seen in the fields at harvest-time. In others 
the traveller passed shuddering through a succession of silent 
villages in which not a single inhabitant remained. The 



286 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

currency had been debased ; the authority of laws and magistrates 
had been suspended ; the whole social system was deranged. 
For, during that convulsive struggle, everything that was not 
military violence was anarchy. Even the army was disorgan- 
ized. Some great generals and a crowd of excellent officers 
had fallen, and it had been impossible to supply their place. 
The difficulty of finding recruits had, towards the close of the 
war, been so great, that selection and rejection were impossi- 
ble. Whole battalions were composed of deserters or of pris- 
oners. It was hardly to be hoped that thirty years of repose 
and industry would repair the ruin produced by seven years of 
havoc. One consolatory circumstance, indeed, there was. No 
debt had been incurred. The burdens of the war had been 
terrible, almost insupportable ; but no arrear was left to embar- 
rass the finances in time of peace. 



ADDISON 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much 
hive affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one 
who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in West- 
minster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not 
betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had 
occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to 
make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of 
genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be 
equally developed ; nor can we expect from him perfect self- 
knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that 
Addison has left us some compositions which do not rise 
above mediocrity — some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, 
some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not 
very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to 
say of a writer that in a high department of literature in 
which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves 
he has had no equal ; and this may, with strict justice, be 
said of Addison. 

As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which 
he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating 
society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his 
generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly in 
his favourite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and 
impartial reflection, we have long been convinced that he 
deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed 
by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may 
undoubtedly be detected in his character ; but the more care- 
fully it is examined, the more will it appear — to use the phrase 
of the old anatomists — sound in the noble parts, free from all 
taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of 

287 



288 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular 
good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. 
But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between 
the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of 
every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and 
dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried 
by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we 
possess equally full information. 

His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, 
though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some 
figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages 
in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up, as a 
poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, 
in the time of the Commonwealth, made some progress in 
learning, became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent 
Royalist, lampooned the heads of the University, and was 
forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left 
college, he earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy 
of the fallen Church to the families of those sturdy squires 
whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. 
After the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the post 
of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was 
sold to France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had 
been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage 
portion of the Infanta Catherine ; and to Tangier Lancelot 
Addison was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be 
conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate 
settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the rains, 
by the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors without it. 
One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent 
opportunity of studying the history and manners of Jews and 
Mahometans ; and of this opportunity he appears to have 
made excellent use. On his return to England, after some 
years of banishment, he published an interesting volume on 
the Polity and Religion of Barbary, and another on the 
Hcbrczv Cnstoins and the State of Rabbinical Learning. He 



ADDISON 289 

rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the 
royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, 
and Dean of Lichfield. It is said that he would have been made 
a bishop after the Revolution if he had not given offence to 
the Government by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation 
of 1689, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, 
his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood we know 
little. He learned his rudiments at school in his father's 
neighbourhood, and was then sent to the Charter House. 
The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish 
tricks do not harmonize very well with what we know of his 
riper years. There remains a tradition that he was the ring- 
leader in a barring out, and another tradition that he ran 
away from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed 
on berries and slept in a hollow tree till after a long search 
he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be 
true, it would be curious to know by what moral discipline so 
mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the 
gentlest and most modest of men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks 
may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and success- 
fully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but 
carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning which 
would have done honour to a Master of Arts. He was entered 
at Queen's College, Oxford ; but he had not been many 
months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident 
into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College. 
The young scholar's diction and versification were already such 
as veteran professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster was desirous 
to serve a boy of such promise ; nor was an opportunity long 
wanting. The Revolution had just taken place ; and nowhere 
had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalen 
College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated 
by James and by his Chancellor with an insolence and injus- 
tice which, even in such a Prince and in such a Minister, 



290 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

may justly excite amazement, and which had done more than 
even the prosecution of the Bishops to ahenate the Church of 
England from the throne. A president, duly elected, had 
been violently expelled from his dwelling ; a Papist had been 
set over the society by a royal mandate ; the Fellows who, in 
conformity with their oaths, had refused to submit to this 
usurper had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and 
gardens to die of want or to live on charity. But the day of 
redress and retribution speedily came. The intruders were 
ejected ; the venerable House was again inhabited by its old 
inmates ; learning flourished under the rule of the wise and 
virtuous Hough ; and with learning was united a mild and 
hberal spirit too often wanting in the princely colleges of 
Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through which . the 
society had passed, there had been no valid election of new 
members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there 
was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus 
Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend 
admittance to the advantages of a foundation then generally 
esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He was, 
at first, one of those scholars who were called Demies, but was 
subsequently elected a Fellow. His college is still proud of 
his name ; his portrait still hangs in the hall ; and strangers 
are still told that his favourite walk was under the elms which 
fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, 
and is highly probable, that he was distinguished arriong his 
fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness 
of his manners, and by the assiduity with which he often pro- 
longed his studies far into the night. It is certain that his repu- 
tation for ability and learning stood high. Many years later, the 
ancient doctors of Magdalen continued to talk in their common 
room of his boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow that 
no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. . . . 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addi- 
son to choose a calling. Everything seemed to point his course 



ADDISON 291 

towards the clerical profession. His habits were regular, his 
opinions orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical prefer- 
ment in its gift, and boasts that it has given at least one 
bishop to almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison 
held an honourable place in the Church, and had set his heart 
on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expres- 
sions in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to 
take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague had 
first brought himself into notice by verses well-timed and not 
contemptibly written, but never, we think, rising above medi- 
ocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his country, he early 
quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank 
as high as that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind 
to official and parliamentary business. It is written that the 
ingenious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince 
of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved 
his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly dropped into the 
lake. But it is added that the wings, which were unable to 
support him through the sky, bore him up effectually as soon 
as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of 
Charles Montague and of men like him. When he attempted 
to soar into the regions of poetical invention, he altogether 
failed ; but as soon as he had descended from that ethereal 
elevation into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly 
raised him above the mass. He became a distinguished finan- 
cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still retained his 
fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; but he showed 
that fondness, not by wearying the public with his own feeble 
performances, but by discovering and encouraging literary ex- 
cellence in others. A crowd of wits and poets who would 
easily have vanquished him as a competitor revered him as 
a judge and a patron. In his plans for the encouragement 
of learning, he was cordially supported by the ablest and 
most virtuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. 
Though both these great statesmen had a sincere love of 
letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that they were 



292 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual qualifications in the 
public service. The Revolution had altered the whole system of 
government. Before that event the press had been controlled 
by censors, and the Parliament had sat only two months in 
eight years. Now the press was free, and had begun to exer- 
cise unprecedented influence on the public mind. Parliament 
met annually and sat long. The chief power in the State had 
passed to the House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it 
w^s natural that literary and oratorical talents should rise in 
\alue. There was danger that a government which neglected 
such talents might be subverted by them. It was, therefore, 
a profound and enlightened policy which led Montague and 
Somers to attach such talents to the Whig party by the strong- 
est ties both of interest and of gratitude. 

It is remarkable that in a neighbouring country we have 
recently seen similar effects follow from similar causes. The 
revolution of July, 1830, established representative government 
in France. The men of letters instantly rose to the highest 
importance in the State. At the present moment most of the 
persons whom we see at the head both of the Administration 
atid of the Opposition have been Professors, Historians, Jour- 
nalists, Poets. The influence of the literary class in England, 
during the generation which followed the Revolution, was great, 
but by no means so great as it has lately been in France. For 
in England the aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a 
powerful and deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. 
France had no Somersets and Shrewsburys to keep down her 
Addisons and Priors, 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just completed 
his twenty-seventh year, that the course of his life was finally 
determined. Both the great chiefs of the Ministry were kindly 
disposed towards him. In political opinions he already was 
what he continued to be through life, a firm though a moderate 
Whig. He had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his 
early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated to Montague 
a Latin poem, truly Virgilian both in style and rh3^hm, on the 



ADDISON 293 

peace of Ryswick, The wish of the young poet's great friends 
was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of the Crown 
abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the French language was 
a qualification indispensable to a diplomatist, and this qualifi- 
cation Addison had not acquired. It was, therefore, thought 
desirable that he should pass some time on the Continent 
in preparing himself for official employment. His own means 
were not such as would enable him to travel, but a pension 
of three hundred pounds a year was procured for him by the 
interest of the Lord Chancellor. It seems to have been appre- 
hended that some difficulty might be started by the rulers of 
Magdalen College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote 
in the strongest terms to Hough. The State — such was the 
purport of Montague's letter — could not at that time spare 
to the Church such a man as Addison. Too many high civil 
posts were already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of 
every liberal art and sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced 
the country which they pretended to serve. It had become 
necessary to recruit for the public service from a very different 
class — from that class of which Addison was the representa- 
tive. The close of the Minister's letter was remarkable. '" I am 
called," he said, "an enemy of the Church ; but I will never 
do it any other injury than keeping Mr, Addison out of it." 

This interference was successful, and in the summer of 
1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and still 
retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford and set 
out on his travels. . . . He returned about the close of the 
year 1703 to England. He was there cordially received by 
his friends, and introduced by them into the Kit Cat Club, a 
society in which were collected all the various talents and 
accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 

Addison was, during some months after his return from 
the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But 
it was soon in the power of his noble patrons to serve him 
effectually. A political change, silent and gradual, but of the 
highest importance, was in daily progress. The accession of 



294 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Anne had been hailed by the Tories with transports of joy 
and hope, and for a time it seemed that the Whigs had 
fallen never to rise again. The throne was surrounded by 
men supposed to be attached to the prerogative and to the 
Church, and among these none stood so high in the favour 
of the Sovereign as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the 
Captain-General Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully 
expected that the policy of these Ministers would be directly 
opposed to that which had been almost constantly followed 
by William ; that the landed interest would be favoured at 
the expense of trade ; that no addition would be made to the 
funded debt ; that the privileges conceded to Dissenters by 
the late King would be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that the 
war with France, if there must be such a war, would on our 
part be almost entirely naval ; and that the Government 
would avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, above 
all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were 
fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices 
and passions which raged without control in vicarages, in 
cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting 
squires, were not shared by the chiefs of the Ministry. Those 
statesmen saw that it was both for the public interest and 
for their own interest to adopt a Whig policy, at least as 
respected the alliances of the country and the conduct of the 
war. But if the foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, 
it was impossible to abstain from adopting also their financial 
policy. The natural consequences followed. The rigid Tories 
were alienated from the Government. The votes of the Whigs 
became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be 
secured only by further concessions, and further concessions 
the Queen was induced to make. 

At the beginning of the year .1704, the state of parties 
bore a close analogy to the st?te of parties in 1826. In 1826, 
as in 1704, there was a Tory Ministry divided into two hos- 
tile sections. The position of Mr. Canning and his friends in 



ADDISON 295 

1826 corresponded to that which Marlborough and Godolphin 
occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704, 
what Lord Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. 
The Whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling that in 
which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, 
Sunderland, Cowper were not in office. There was no avowed 
coalition between them and the moderate Tories. It is prob- 
able that no direct communication tending to such a coalition 
had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coalition 
was inevitable — nay, that it was already half formed. Such, or 
nearly such, was the state of things when tidings arrived of the 
great battle fought at Blenheim on the 13th of August, 1704. 
By the Whigs the news was hailed with transports of joy and 
pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by 
them against the Commander whose genius had in one day 
changed the face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, 
humbled the House of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 
Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the Tories 
was very different. They could not, indeed, without impru- 
dence, openly express regret at an event so glorious to their 
country ; but their congratulations were so cold and sullen as 
to give deep disgust to the victorious general and his friends. 
Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he 
could spare from business he was in the habit of spending at 
Newmarket or at the card-table. But he was not absolutely 
indifferent to poetry, and he was too intelligent an observer 
not to perceive that literature was a formidable engine of polit- 
ical warfare, and that the great Whig leaders had strengthened 
their party and raised their character by extending a liberal 
and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, 
and not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the 
poems which appeared in honour of the battle of Blenheim. 
One of those poems has been rescued from oblivion by the 
exquisite absurdity of three lines : 

Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals. 



296 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Where to procure better verses the Treasurer did not know. 
He understood how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy ; 
he was also well versed in the history of running horses and 
fighting cocks ; but his acquaintance among the poets was very 
small. He consulted Halifax ; but Halifax affected to decline 
the office of adviser. He had, he said, done his best, when he 
had power, to encourage men whose abilities and acquirements 
might do honour to their country. Those times were over. 
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in 
obscurity, and the public money was squandered on the un- 
deserving. " I do know," he added, " a gentleman who would 
celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of the subject ; but I 
will not name him." Godolphin, who was expert at the soft 
answer which turns away wrath, and who was under the 
necessity of paying court to the Whigs, gently replied that 
there was too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but that 
what was amiss should in time be rectified, and that in the 
meantime the services of a man such as Halifax had described 
should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addi- 
son, but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary 
interest of his friend, insisted that the Minister should apply 
in the most courteous manner to Addison himself ; and this 
Godolphin promised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs 
over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this humble lodging 
he was surprised, on the morning which followed the con- 
versation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no 
less a person than the Right Honourable Henry Boyle, then 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. 
This high-born Minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer 
as ambassador to the needy poet, Addison readily undertook 
the proposed task — a task which to so good a Whig was 
probably a pleasure. When the poem was little more than half 
finished, he showed it to Godolphin, who was delighted with 
it, and particularly with the famous similitude of the Angel. 
Addison was instantly appointed to a Commissionership worth 



ADDISON 297 

about two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this 
appointment was only an earnest of greater favours. 

The Campaign came forth, and was as much admired by 
the pubhc as by the Minister. It pleases us less on the 
whole than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet it undoubtedly ranks 
high among the poems which appeared during the interval 
between the death of Dryden and the dawn of Pope's genius. 
The chief merit of the Campaign, we think, is that which was 
noticed by Johnson — the manly and rational rejection of 
fiction. The first great poet whose works have come down to 
us sang of war long before war became a science or a trade. 
If in his time there was enmity between two little Greek 
towns, each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of 
discipline, and armed with implements of labour rudely turned 
into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few 
chiefs whose wealth had enabled them to procure good 
armour, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had enabled 
them to practise military exercises. One such chief, if he 
were a man of great strength, agility, and courage, would 
probably be more formidable than twenty common men ; and 
the force and dexterity with which he flung his spear might 
have no inconsiderable share in deciding the event of the 
day. Such were probably the battles with which Homer was 
familiar. But Homer related the actions of men of a former 
generation — of men who sprang from the Gods, and com- 
muned with the Gods face to face ; of men one of whom 
could with ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later 
period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally 
represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but 
far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most 
expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial 
armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which 
none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia 
before him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a 
magnificent exaggeration of the real hero who, strong, fear- 
less, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield 



298 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by 
horses of Thessalian breed, struck down with his own right 
arm foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions are 
found. There are at this day countries where the Lifeguards- 
man Shaw would be considered as a much greater warrior 
than the Duke of Wellington, Bonaparte loved to describe 
the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his 
diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his 
fellows by his bodily strength and by the skill with which 
he managed his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a 
man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, 
could be the greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much truth as 
poetry requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the per- 
formances of those who, writing about battles which had 
scarcely anything in common with the battles of his times, 
servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in 
particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to record in 
verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of 
the first order ; and his narrative is made up of the hideous 
wounds which these generals inflicted with their own hands. 
Hasdrubal flings a spear which grazes the shoulder of the consul 
Nero ; but Nero sends his spear into Hasdrubal's side. Fabius 
slays Thuris and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- 
haired Adherbes and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and 
Monaesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Peru- 
sinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone 
of Telesinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was 
copied in modern times, and continued to prevail down to the 
age of Addison. Several versifiers had described William turn- 
ing thousands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the 
Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John 
Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, represented Marl- 
borough as having won the battle of Blenheim merely by 
strength of muscle and skill in fence. The following lines 
may serve as an example : 



ADDISON 299 

Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood. 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 
Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from this 
ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the qualities 
which made Marlborough truly great — energy, sagacity, military 
science ; but, above all, the poet extolled the firmness of that 
mind which, in the midst of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, 
examined and disposed everything with the serene wisdom of 
a higher intelligence. 

Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison of 
Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We will not 
dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. 
But we must point out one circumstance which appears to have 
escaped all the critics. The extraordinary effect which this 
simile produced when it first appeared, and which to the follow- 
ing generation seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a feeble 

parenthesis — 

Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd. 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The great 
tempest of November, 1703 — the only tempest which in our 
latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane — had left 
a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. No other 
tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a parliamen- 
tary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast 
away. Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate 



300 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and 
Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. 
Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate 
trunks of large trees and the ruins of houses still attested, in 
all the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity 
which the simile of the angel enjoyed among Addison's con- 
temporaries has always seemed to us to be a remarkable in- 
stance of the advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the 
particular has over the general. 

Soon after the Campaign, was published Addison's Narra- 
tive of his Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by this 
Narrative was disappointment. The crowd of readers who ex- 
pected politics and scandal, speculations on the projects of 
Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities of convents 
and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by 
finding that the writer's mind was much more occupied by the 
war between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war be- 
tween France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have heard 
no scandal of later date than the gallantries of the Empress 
Faustina. In time, however, the judgment of the many was 
overruled by that of the few ; and before the book was re- 
printed it was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the 
original price. It is still read with pleasure ; the style is pure 
and flowing ; the classical quotations and allusions are numer- 
ous and happy ; and we are now and then charmed by that 
singularly humane and delicate humour in which Addison 
excelled all men. Yet this agreeable work, even when con- 
sidered merely as the history of a literary tour, may justly be 
censured on account of its faults of omission. We have 
already said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, 
it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators and 
historians. We must add that it contains little or rather no 
information respecting the history and literature of modern 
Italy. To the best of our remembrance, Addison does not 
mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo 
de' Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara 
he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the 



ADDISON 301 

gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto 
he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius 
Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of 
Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula suggests 
to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word 
to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses the 
wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, 
and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of 
Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an introduction 
to Boileau ; but he seems not to have been at all aware that 
at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau 
could not sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of 
modern times, Vincenzo Filicaja. This is the more remark- 
able because Filicaja was the favourite poet of the accomplished 
Somers, under whose protection Addison travelled, and to whom 
the account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, that 
Addison knew little, and cared less, about the literature of 
modern Italy. His favourite models were Latin. His favourite 
critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read 
seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. 

His Travels were followed by the lively opera of Rosamond. 
This piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the 
stage ; but it completely succeeded in print, and is indeed ex^ 
cellent in its kind. The smoothness with which the verses 
glide, and the elasticity with which they bound, are, to our ears 
at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to think that if Addi- 
son had left heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, 
and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, 
his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it 
now does. Some years after his death, Rosamond was set to 
new music by Doctor Arne, and was performed with complete 
success. Several passages long retained their popularity, and 
were daily sung during the latter part of George the Second's 
reign at all the harpsichords in England. 

While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, and the 
prospects of his party, were constantly becoming brighter and 
brighter. In the spring of 1705, the Ministers were freed from 



302 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the restraint imposed by a House of Commons in which Tories 
of the most perverse class had the ascendency. The elections 
were favourable to the Whigs. The coalition which had been 
tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. The Great 
Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of 
the Council. Halifax was sent in the following year to carry 
the decorations of the Order of the Garter to the Electoral 
Prince of Hanover, and was accompanied on this honourable 
mission by Addison, who had just been made Under-Secretary 
of State. The Secretary of State under whom Addison first 
served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon 
dismissed to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland, In every department of the State, 
indeed, the High Churchmen were compelled to give place to 
their opponents. At the close of 1707, the Tories who still 
remained in office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. 
But the attempt, though favoured by the Queen, who had al- 
ways been a Tory at heart, and who had now quarrelled with 
the Duchess of Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The tirne was 
not yet. The Captain-General was at the height of popularity 
and glory.- The Low Church party had a majority in Parlia- 
ment. The country squires and rectors, though occasionally 
uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a state of 
torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activity, and in- 
deed into madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Harley 
and his adherents were compelled to retire. The victory of the 
Whigs was complete. At the general election of 1708, their 
strength in the House of Commons became irresistible ; and 
before the end of that year Somers was made Lord President 
of the Council, and Wharton Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. 

Addison sat for Malmesbury in the House of Commons which 
was elected in 1708. But the House of Commons was not the 
field for him. The bashfulness of his nature made his wit and 
eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but could not over- 
come his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody 
can think it strange that a great, writer should fail as a speaker. 



ADDISON 303 

But many, probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure 
as a speaker should have had no unfavourable effect on his 
success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and 
great fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, 
hold a considerable post. But it would now be inconceivable 
that a mere adventurer — a man who, when out of office, must 
live by his pen — should in a few years become successively 
Under-Secretary of State, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Sec- 
retary of State without some oratorical talent. Addison, with- 
out high birth, and with little property, rose to a post which 
Dukes — the heads of the great Houses of Talbot, Russell, and 
Bentinck — have thought it an honour to fill. Without opening 
his lips in debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham 
or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the explanation 
of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circumstances in which 
that generation was placed. During the interval which elapsed 
between the time when the Censorship of the Press ceased 
and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be 
freely reported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much 
more importance, and oratorical talents of much less impor- 
tance, than in our time. At present the best way of giving 
rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an argument is to intro- 
duce that fact or argument into a speech made in Parliament. 
If a political tract were to appear superior to the Conduct of 
the Allies or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the cir- 
culation of such a tract would be languid indeed when com- 
pared with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in 
the deliberations of the Legislature. A speech made in the 
House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty thou- 
sand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read 
on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeen- 
shire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to 
a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in 
the reign of Anne. The best speech could then produce no 
effect except on those who heard it. It was only by means of 



304 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the press that the opinion of the public without-doors could be 
influenced ; and the opinion of the public without-doors could 
not but be of the highest importance in a country governed 
by parliaments, and indeed at that time governed by triennial 
parliaments. The pen was therefore a more formidable politi- 
cal engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr, Fox contended 
only in Parliament. But Walpole and Pulteney — the Pitt and 
Fox of an earlier period — had not done half of what was neces- 
sary when they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House 
of Commons. They had still to plead their cause before the 
country, and this they could do only by means of the press. 
Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain that there 
were in Grub Street few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, 
Letters, Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs of par- 
ties. Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition and possessed of 
thirty thousand a year, edited the Ci-aftsinan. Walpole, though 
not a man of literary habits, was the author of at least ten 
pamphlets, and retouched and corrected many more. These 
facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary assist- 
ance then was to the contending parties. St. John was cer- 
tainly, in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker ; Cowper was 
probably the best Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted 
whether St. John did so much for the Tories as Swift, and 
whether Cowper did so much for the Whigs as Addison. 
When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought 
strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the State 
than any other Englishman has ever, by means merely of lit- 
erary talents, been able to climb. Swift would, in all proba- 
bility, have climbed as high if he had not been encumbered 
by his cassock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the hom- 
age of the great went. Swift had as much of it as if he had 
been Lord Treasurer. 

To the influence which Addison derived from his literary 
talents was added all the influence which arises from character. 
The world, always ready to think the worst of needy political 
adventurers, was forced to make one exception. Restlessness, 



ADDISON 305 

violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily 
attributed to that class of men. But faction itself could not 
deny that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been 
strictly faithful to his early opinions and to his early friends ; 
that his integrity was without stain ; that his whole deportment 
indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that in the utmost 
heat of controversy his zeal was tempered by a regard for 
truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage could 
ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and 
a gentleman ; and that his only faults were a too sensitive 
delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his 
time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that 
very timidity which his friends lamented. That timidity often 
prevented him from exhibiting his talents to the best advan- 
tage. But it propitiated 'Nemesis. It averted that envy which 
would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid and by 
so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favourite with the 
public as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, 
and of pity ; and such were the feelings which Addison in- 
spired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar 
conversation declared with one voice that it was superior even 
to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montague said that she 
had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best com- 
pany in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own 
that there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found 
nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the 
Whigs, could not but confess to Stella that, after all, he had 
never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, 
an excellent judge of lively conversation, said that the con- 
versation of Addison was at once the most polite and the 
most mirthful that could be imagined ; that it was Terence 
and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something 
which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. 
Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said that 
when Addison was at his ease he went on in a noble strain of 



3o6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

thought and language, so as to chain the attention of every 
hearer. Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers more 
admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which ap- 
peared in his conversation. At the same time, it would be too 
much to say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, 
perhaps, inseparable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He 
had one habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and 
which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to 
set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed his 
tone, "assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered cox- 
comb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his 
practice, we should, we think, have guessed from his works. 
The Tatlcr s criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet and the Spec- 
tator s dialogue with the politician who is so zealous for the 
honour of Lady O — p — t — s, are excellent specimens of this 
innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare 
gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as 
he entered a large company, as soon as he saw an unknown 
face, his lips were sealed and his manners became constrained. 
None who met him only in great assemblies would have been 
able to believe that he was the same man who had often kept 
a few friends listening and laughing round a table from the 
time when the play ended till the clock of St. Paul's in 
Covent Garden struck four. Yet even at such a table he was 
not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in 
the highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone with him, 
and to hear him, in his own phrase, think aloud. " There is 
no such thing," he used to say, "as real conversation but 
between two persons." 

This timidity — a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor un- 
amiable — led Addison into the two most serious faults which 
can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke 
the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too 
easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that 
age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all 



ADDISON 307 

peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding 
that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- 
man. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground ; and 
almost all the biographers of Addison have said something 
about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen 
Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he some- 
times took too much wine than that he wore a long wig and 
a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we must 
ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very dif- 
ferent cause. He became a little too fond of seeing himself 
surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom he was as 
a King, or rather as a God. All these men were far inferior 
to him in ability, and some of them had very serious faults. 
Nor did those faults escape his observation ; for if ever there 
was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the 
eye of Addison. But, with the keenest observation, and the 
finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity. The 
feeling with which he looked on most of his humble com- 
panions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured with con- 
tempt. He was at perfect ease in their company ; he was 
grateful for their devoted attachment ; and he loaded them with 
benefits. Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded 
that with which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warbur- 
ton by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn 
such a head or deprave such a heart as Addison's. But it 
must in candour be admitted that he contracted some of the 
faults which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so 
unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, a young 
Templar of some literature, and a distant relation of Addison. 
There was at this time no stain on the character of Budgell, 
and it is not improbable that his career would have been pros- 
perous and honourable if the life of his cousin had been pro- 
longed. But when the master was laid in the grave, the 
disciple broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from 



3o8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

one degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune 
by folhes, attempted to repair it by crimes, and at length 
closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet to the 
last, the wretched man — gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as 
he was — retained his affection and veneration for Addison, and 
recorded those feelings in the last lines which he traced before 
he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favourite companions was Ambrose 
Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the 
honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which 
has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby. But the most 
remarkable members of the little senate, as Pope long after- 
wards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been 
together at the Charter House and at Oxford ; but circumstances 
had then, for a time, separated them widely. Steele had left 
college without taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich 
relation, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, had 
tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious 
treatise and several comedies. He was one of those people 
whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His. temper 
was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions 
strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning 
and repenting, in inculcating what was right and doing what 
was wrong. In speculation he was a man of piety and honour; 
in practice he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. 
He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be 
seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more 
inclined to pity than to blame him when he diced himself into 
a spunging-house or drank himself into a fever. Addison 
regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn, tried, 
with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, introduced him 
to the great, procured a good place for him, corrected his plays, 
and, though by no means rich, lent him large suras of money. 
One of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 
1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary 



■ ADDISON 309 

transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that 
on one occasion Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked 
Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot 
join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it 
from Savage, who had heard it from Steele. Few private trans- 
actions which took place a hundred and twenty years ago are 
proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no means 
agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. The most 
amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation when 
what he has earned hardly and lent with great inconvenience 
to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is 
squandered with insane profusion. We will illustrate our mean- 
ing by an example, which is not the less striking because it is 
taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia, is 
represented as the most benevolent of human beings ; yet he 
takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person, of his 
friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure 
because he has been informed that Booth, while pleading 
poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has been 
buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No person who 
is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspondence can 
doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was 
accused of behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we 
have little doubt, was something like this : A letter comes 
to Addison imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising 
reformation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that 
he has not an inch of candle or a bushel of coals, or credit 
with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. 
He determines to deny himself some medals which are want- 
ing to his series of the twelve Caesars, to put off buying the 
new edition of Bayle's Dictionary, and to wear his old sword 
and buckles another year. In this way he manages to send a 
hundred pounds to his friend. The next day he calls on 
Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies assembled. 
The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under cham- 
pagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange 



3IO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

that a man whose kindness is thus abused should send sheriff's 
officers to reclaim what is due to him? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had 
introduced himself to public notice by writing a most ingenious 
and graceful little poem in praise of the opera of Rosamond. 
He deserved, and at length attained, the first place in Addison's 
friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. 
But they loved Addison too much to love each other, and at 
length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. 

At the close" of 1 708 Wharton became Lord-Lieutenant of 
Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison 
was consequently under the necessity of quitting London for 
Dublin. Besides the chief secretaryship, which was then worth 
about two thousand pounds a year, he obtained a patent appoint- 
ing him Keeper of the Irish Records for life, with a salary of 
three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his cousin 
in the capacity of private secretary. 

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whiggism. 
The Lord-Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but 
was distinguished from other libertines and jobbers by a callous 
impudence which presented the strongest contrast to the Secre- 
tary's gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish adminis- 
tration at this time appear to have deserved serious blame. But 
against Addison there was not a murmur. He long afterwards 
asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen tends 
to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the friendship 
of all the most considerable persons in Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think, 
wholly escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected 
member for the borough of Cavan in the summer of 1 709 ; and 
in the journals of two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some 
of the entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his 
timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any means im- 
probable ; for the Irish House of Commons was a far less 
formidable audience than the English House ; and many 
tongues which were tied by fear in the greater assembly 



ADDISON 311 

became fluent in the smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, 
who, from fear of losing the fame gained by his single speech, 
sat mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke with great 
effect at Dublin when he was Secretary to Lord Halifax. 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to which 
he owes his high and permanent rank among British writers. 
As yet his fame rested on performances which, though highly 
respectable, were not built for duration, and which would, if he 
had produced nothing else, have now been almost forgotten — 
on some excellent Latin verses, on some English verses which 
occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, 
agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers 
of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, 
and learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself 
a man of genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions 
which will live as long as the English language. 

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, of 
which he was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. 
Periodical papers had. during many years been published in 
London. Most of these were political ; but in some of them 
questions of morality, taste, and love casuistry had been dis- 
cussed. The literary merit of these works was small indeed ; 
and even their names are now known only to the curious. 

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, at the 
request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access to foreign 
intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in those times 
within the reach of an ordinary news-writer. This circumstance 
seems to have suggested to him the scheme of publishing a 
periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on the days 
on which the post left London for the country, which were, in 
that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It 
was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical repre- 
sentations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. 
It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the 
day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, 
and criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele does 



312 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

not appear to have been at first higher than this. He was not 
ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. His 
public intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew 
the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had read 
much more than the dissipated men of that time were in the 
habit of reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar 
among rakes. His style was easy and not incorrect; and, though 
his wit and humour were of no high order, his gay animal spirits 
imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary 
readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His 
writings have been well compared to those light wines which, 
though deficient in body and flavour, are yet a pleasant small 
drink, if not kept too long or carried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary per- 
son, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or 
Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the name 
of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the 
maker of almanacks. Partridge had been fool enough to pub- 
lish a furious reply, Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second 
pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had 
combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in con- 
vulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name 
which this controversy had made popular ; and, in April, 1 709, 
it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, 
was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. 

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme : but as 
soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his assistance. 
The effect of that assistance cannot be better described than 
in Steele's own words. " I fared," he said, "like a distressed 
prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was 
undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I 
could not subsist without dependence on him." " The paper," 
he says elsewhere, " was advanced indeed. It was raised to a 
greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. George's 
Channel his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of 



ADDISON 313 

the extent and variety of his own powers. He was the pos- 
sessor of a vast mine rich with a hundred ores. But he had 
been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treas- 
ures, and had hitherto contented himself with producing some- 
times copper and sometimes lead, intermingled with a little 
silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on 
an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 

The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have 
sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not even by 
Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English language been 
written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was 
the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his 
thoughts in the half-French style of Horace Walpole, or in 
the half- Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half-German 
jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed 
over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands un- 
rivalled. If ever the best Tatlcrs and Spectators were equalled 
in their own kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must 
have been by the lost comedies of Menander. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley 
or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy 
analogies as are crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; 
and we would undertake to collect from the Spectators as great 
a number of ingenious illustrations as can be found in Hiidibras. 
The still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in still 
larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally original, 
often wild and grotesque, but always singularly graceful and 
happy, which are found in his essays fully entitle him to the 
rank of a great poet — a rank to which his metrical compositions 
give him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all 
the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. 
And what he observed he had the art of communicating in two 
widely different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, 
whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do something 
better. He could call human beings into existence, and make 
them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find anything more 



314 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either to 
Shakspeare or to Cervantes. 

But what shall we say of Addison's humour — of his sense of 
the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, 
and of drawing mirth from incidents which occur every day, 
and from little peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may 
be found in every man ? We feel the charm ; we give ourselves 
up to it ; but we strive in vain to analyze it. 

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar 
pleasantry is to .compare it with the pleasantry of some other 
great satirists. The three most eminent masters of the art of 
ridicule during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, 
Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had the 
greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But 
each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without 
disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he grins ; he shakes his 
sides ; he points the finger ; he turns up the nose ; he shoots 
out the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite to 
this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in 
his works such as he appeared in society. All the company are 
convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all 
the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of 
aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous 
fancies with the air of a man reading the commination service. 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as 
from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French 
wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double portion of severity 
into his countenance while laughing inwardly ; but preserves a 
look peculiarly his own — a look of demure serenity, disturbed 
only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible 
elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. 
His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. 
It is that of a gentleman in whom the quickest sense of the 
ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good 
breeding. 



ADDISON 315 

We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opinion, of 
a more deHcious flavour than the humour of either Swift or 
Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and 
Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and that no man 
has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbe 
Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed during a 
long time on the Academicians of Paris. There are passages 
in Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot dis- 
tinguish from Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent 
men who have made Addison their model, though several have 
copied his mere diction with happy effect, none has been able 
to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in the 
Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lonnger, there are numer- 
ous papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and 
Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit ; many are 
very lively and amusing ; but there is not a single one which 
could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest 
perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, 
from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of ridi- 
cule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity, which we 
find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and 
darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. 
The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman ; but he ven- 
erated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the 
purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause 
nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything 
but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the 
theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. 
The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the mirth 
of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly 
imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and just 
men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of 
the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the 
mirth of Addison — a mirth consistent with tender compassion 
for all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that 



3i6 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no 
doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has ever been asso- 
ciated by Addison with any degrading idea. His humanity 
is without parallel in literary history. The highest proof of 
virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. No 
kind of power is more formidable than the power of making 
men ridiculous ; and that power Addison possessed in bound- 
less measure. How grossly that power was abused by Swift 
and by Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may be 
confidently affirrned that he has blackened no man's' character ; 
nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all 
the volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be 
called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors whose 
malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge 
as that which men not superior to him in genius wreaked on 
Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politi- 
cian ; he was the best writer of his party ; he lived in times 
of fierce excitement, in times when persons of high character 
and station stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only 
by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no exam- 
ple could induce him to return railing for railing. 

Of the service which his Essays rendered to morality it is 
difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when the Tatler 
appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and licentious- 
ness which followed the Restoration had passed away. Jeremy 
Collier had shamed the theatres into something which, com- 
pared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be 
called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a 
pernicious notion that there was some connection between 
genius and profligacy, between the domestic virtues and the 
sullen formality of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of 
Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the 
faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found 
in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, 
and with humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So 
effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had 



ADDISON 317 

recently been directed against virtue that, since his time, the 
open violation of decency has always been considered among 
us as the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and 
most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be 
it remembered, without writing one personal lampoon. 

In the earlier contributions of Addison to the Tatler his 
peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first 
his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his 
later Tatlers are fully equal to anything that he ever wrote. 
Among the portraits we most admire "Tom Folio," "Ned 
Softly," and the " Political Upholsterer," " The Proceedings 
of the Court of Honour," the "Thermometer of Zeal," the 
story of the " Frozen Words," the " Memoirs of the Shilling," 
are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of 
fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still 
better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a 
hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as 
edifying as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate 
it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century. 

During the session of Parliament which commenced in 
November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sacheverell 
has made memorable, Addison appears to have resided in 
London. The Tatler was now more popular than any period- 
ical paper had ever been, and his connection with it was 
generally known. It was not known, however, that almost 
everything good in the Tatler was his. The truth is that the 
fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him were not merely 
the best, but so decidedly the best that any five of them are 
more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which he 
had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could 
derive from literary success. The Queen had always disliked 
the Whigs. She had during some years disliked the Marl- 
borough family. But, reigning by a disputed title, she could 
not venture directly to oppose herself to a majority of both 
Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as she was in a war on 



3i8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the event of which her own Crown was staked, she could not 
venture to disgrace a great and successful general. But at 
length, in the year i/io, the causes which had restrained her 
from showing her aversion to the Low Church party ceased 
to operate. The trial of Sacheverell produced an outbreak of 
public feeling scarcely less violent than the outbreaks which 
we can ourselves remember in 1820 and 183 1. The country 
gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, 
were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a 
general election took place before the excitement abated, the 
Tories would have a majority. The services of Marlborough 
had been so splendid that they were no longer necessary. 
The Queen's throne was secure from all attack on the part of 
Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the English 
and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and 
Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring back the 
Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, acting by the advice 
of Harley, determined to dismiss her servants. In June the 
change commenced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The 
Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, during a few 
weeks, to persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted 
only from personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she 
meditated no further alteration. But, early in August, Godol- 
phin was surprised by a letter from Anne which directed him 
to break his white staff. Even after this event, the irresolu- 
tion or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes of the 
Whigs during another month ; and then the ruin became 
rapid and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The Min- 
isters were turned out. The Tories were called to office. The 
tide of popularity ran violently in favour of the High Church 
party. That party, feeble in the late House of Commons, 
was now irresistible. The power which the Tories had thus 
suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. 
The howl which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood 
appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. 
When, at this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct 



ADDISON 319 

of the discarded Ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of 
indignation at the injustice with which they were treated. No 
body of men had ever administered the Government with 
more energy, ability, and moderation ; and their success had 
been proportioned to their wisdom. They had saved Holland 
and Germany. They had humbled France. They had, as it 
seemed, all but torn Spain from the House of Bourbon. 
They had made England the first power in Europe. At home 
they had united England and Scotland. They had respected 
the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They 
retired, leaving their country at the height of prosperity and 
glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a 
roar of obloquy as was never raised against the Government 
which threw away thirteen colonies, or against the Govern- 
ment which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of 
Walcheren. 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck 
than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecuniary 
losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly informed, 
when the Secretaryship was taken from him. He had reason 
to believe that he should also be deprived of the small Irish 
office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his 
Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured 
to raise his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political 
friends were in power and while his own fortunes were rising, 
he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were then 
fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingen- 
ious writer and Mr. Addison the Chief Secretary were, in 
her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All these 
calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene cheer- 
fulness of a mind conscious of innocence and rich in its own 
wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that 
they ought to admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once 
his fortune, his place, his Fellowship, and his mistress ; that 
he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits 
were as good as ever. 



320 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his 
friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem 
with which he was regarded that, while the most violent 
measures were taken for the purpose of forcing Tory members 
on Whig corporations, he was returned to Parliament without 
even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who had 
already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in 
these remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the new 
members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy 
and undisputed 4 and I believe if he had a mind to be king, 
he would hardly be refused." 

The goodwill with which the Tories regarded Addison is 
the more honourable to him because it had not been pur- 
chased by any concession on his part. During the general 
election he published a political Journal entitled the Whig 
Examiner. Of that Journal it may be sufficient to say that 
Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pronounced 
it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other 
side. When it ceased to appear. Swift, in a letter to Stella, 
expressed his exultation at the death of so formidable an 
antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says Johnson, "at the 
death of that which he could not have killed." "On no occa- 
sion," he adds, " was the genius of Addison more vigorously 
exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers more 
evidently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have made of the 
favour with which he was regarded by the Tories was to save 
some of his friends from the general ruin of the Whig party. 
He felt himself to be in a situation which made it his duty to 
take a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of 
Ambrose Philips was different. For Philips, Addison even 
condescended to solicit, with what success we have not ascer- 
tained. Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he 
was also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette was taken 
from him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the 
Stamp Office on an implied understanding that he should not 



ADDISON 321 

be active against the new Government ; and he was, during 
more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this armi- 
stice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon politics, and 
the article of news, which had once formed about one-third of 
his paper, altogether disappeared. The Tatler had completely 
changed its character. It was now nothing but a series of 
essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele therefore re- 
solved to bring it to a close, and to commence a new work 
on an improved plan. It was announced that this new work 
would be published daily. The undertaking was generally re- 
garded as bold, or rather rash; but the event amply justified 
the confidence with which Steele relied on the fertility of 
Addison's genius. On the second of January, 171 1, appeared 
the last Tatler. At the beginning of March following appeared 
the first of an incomparable series of papers containing obser- 
vations on life and literature by an imaginary Spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addison ; 
and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant to be 
in some features a likeness of the painter. The Spectator is 
a gentleman who, after passing a studious youth at the univer- 
sity, has travelled on classic ground, and has bestowed much 
attention on curious points of antiquity. He has, on his return, 
fixed his residence in London, and has observed all the forms 
of life which are to be found in that great city — has daily 
listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with the philoso- 
phers of the Grecian, and has mingled with the parsons at 
Child's, and with the politicians at the St. James's. In the 
morning he often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in 
the evening his face is constantly to be seen in the pit of 
Drury Lane Theatre. But an insurmountable bashfulness pre- 
vents him from opening his mouth, except in a small circle 
of intimate friends. 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of the 
club — the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant 
— were uninteresting figures, fit only for a background. But the 



322 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

other two — an old country baronet and an old town rake — 
though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, had some 
good strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own 
hands, retouched them, coloured them, and is in truth the 
creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honey- 
comb with whom we are all familiar. 

The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both orig- 
inal and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series 
may be read with pleasure separately ; yet the five or six hun- 
dred essays form- a whole, and a whole which has the interest 
of a novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that time 
no novel giving a lively and powerful picture of the common 
life and manners of England had appeared. Richardson was 
working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. 
Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which 
connects together the Spectator's Essays gave to our ancestors 
their first taste of an exquisite and untried pleasure. That 
narrative was indeed constructed with no art or labour. The 
events were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes 
up to town to see Eugenio (as the worthy baronet always 
called Prince Eugene), goes with the Spectator on the water to 
Spring Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and 
is frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension 
so far as to go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is 
acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley 
Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the 
old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the 
assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. 
At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the club the 
news that Sir Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and 
reforms at sixty. The club breaks up, and the Spectator 
resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be said to form 
a plot ; yet they are related with such truth, such grace, such 
wit, such humour, such pathos, such knowledge of the human 
heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they 
charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have not the least 



ADDISON 323 

doubt that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive 
plan, it would have been superior to any that we possess. As 
it is, he is entitled to be considered not only as the greatest 
of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the greatest 
English novelists. 

We say this of Addison alone, for Addison is the Spectator. 
About three-sevenths of the work are his ; and it is no ex- 
aggeration to say that his worst essay is as good as the best 
essay of his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to abso- 
lute perfection ; nor is their excellence more wonderful than 
their variety. His invention never seems to flag ; nor is he 
ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing 
out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales 
us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there 
was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have 
tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and 
a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we 
have an allegory as lively and mgenious as Lucian's Auction 
of Lives ; on the Tuesday, an Eastern apologue as richly 
coloured as the Tales of Scherczade ; on the Wednesday, a 
character described with the skill of La Bruyere ; on the 
Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters 
in the Vicar of Wakefield \ on the Friday, some sly Horatian 
pleasantry on fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet 
shows ; and, on the Saturday, a religious meditation which will 
bear a comparison with the finest passages in Massillon. 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much that de- 
serves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to say 
that any person who wishes to form a just notion of the extent 
and variety of Addison's powers will do well to read at one 
sitting the following papers : the two " Visits to the Abbey," 
the "Visit to the Exchange," the "Journal of the Retired 
Citizen," the "Vision of Mirza," the "Transmigrations of Pug 
the Monkey," and the " Death of Sir Roger de Coverley." ^ 

* Nos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. These papers are all in the first seven 
volumes. The eighth must be considered as a separate work. 



324 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the Spectator 
are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his 
critical papers are always luminous, and often ingenious. The 
very worst of them must be regarded as creditable to him, 
when the character of the school in which he had been trained 
is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good 
for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our gen- 
eration as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator 
were more censured and derided than those in which he raised 
his voice against the contempt with which our fine old ballads 
were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same gold 
which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the ALneid and 
the Odes of Horace is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy 
Chase. 

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should 
have been such as no similar work has ever obtained. The 
number of copies daily distributed was at first three thousand. 
It subsequently increased, and had risen to near four thousand 
when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to. a 
crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, 
doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, still 
yielded a large revenue both to the State and to the authors. 
For particular papers the demand was immense ; of some, it 
is said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this was 
not all. To have the Spectator served up every morning with 
the bohea and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority 
were content to wait till essays enough had appeared to form 
a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were imme- 
diately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must 
be remembered that the population of England was then 
hardly a third of what it now is. The number of Englishmen 
who were in the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of 
what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any 
pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did not 
contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included. 



ADDISON 325 

In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be con- 
sidered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the 
most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens 
in our own time. 

At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. It 
was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman and his club 
had been long enough before the town, and that it was time 
to withdraw them, and to replace them by a new set of charac- 
ters. In a few weeks the first number of the Guardian was 
published. But the Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth 
and in its death. It began in dulness, and disappeared in a 
tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison con- 
tributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared ; and it was 
then impossible to make the Guardian what the Spectator had 
been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to 
whom even he could impart no interest. He could only furnish 
some excellent little essays, both serious and comic, and this 
he did. 

Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian during 
the first two months of its existence is a question which has 
puzzled the editors and biographers, but which seems to us to 
admit of a very easy solution. He was then engaged in bring- 
ing his Cato on the stage. 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his desk 
since his return from Italy. His modest and sensitive nature 
shrank from the risk of a public and shameful failure ; and, 
though all who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some 
thought it possible that an audience might become impatient 
even of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the 
play without hazarding a representation. At length, after many 
fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his 
political friends, who hoped that the public would discover some 
analogy between the followers of Caesar and the Tories, between 
Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling 
to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of patriots 
who still stood firm around Halifax and Wharton. 



326 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane 
Theatre without stipulating for any advantage to himself. 
They therefore thought themselves bound to spare no cost in 
scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not 
have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Macready. Juba's waistcoat 
blazed with gold lace ; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a Duchess 
on the birthday ; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. 
The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a dig- 
nified and spirited composition. The part of the hero was ex- 
cellently played by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. 
The boxes were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Op- 
position. The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly 
listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary coffee-houses. 
Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank of England, was 
at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from the city, 
warm men and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's 
and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits and critics. 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, as a 
body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. Nor was it 
for their interest, professing, as they did, profound reverence 
for law and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular insur- 
rections and of standing armies, to appropriate to themselves 
reflections thrown on the great military chief and demagogue, 
who, with the support of the legions and of the common 
people, subverted all the ancient institutions of his country. 
Accordingly, every shout that was raised by the members of 
the Kit Cat was echoed by the High Churchmen of the Octo- 
ber; and the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of 
unanimous applause. 

The delight and admiration of the town were described by 
the Gitardian in terms which we might attribute to partiality, 
were it not that the Examiner, the organ of the Ministry, held 
similar language. The Tories, indeed, found much to sneer 
at in the conduct of their opponents. Steele had on this, as 
on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. 
The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir 



ADDISON 327 

Gibby-, as he was facetiously called, probably knew better when 
to buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when to 
hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypo- 
critical Sempronius their favourite, and by giving to his 
insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on the tem- 
perate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the incredible 
effrontery to applaud the lines about flying from prosperous 
vice and from the power of impious men to a private station, 
did not escape the sarcasms of those who justly thought that 
he could fly from nothing more vicious or impious than him- 
self. The epilogue, which was written by Garth, a zealous 
Whig, was severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble 
and out of place. But Addison was described, even by the 
bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in 
whose friendship many persons of both parties were happy, 
and whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious 
squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was 
disturbed, the most severe and happy was Bolingbroke's. 
Between two acts, he sent for Booth to his box, and presented 
him, before the whole theatre, with a purse" of fifty guineas 
for defending the cause of liberty so well against the perpetual 
Dictator. This was a pungent allusion to the attempt which 
Marlborough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain a 
patent, creating him Captain-General for life. 

It was April ; and in April, a hundred and thirty years ago, 
the London season was thought to be far advanced. During 
a whole month, however, Cato was performed to overflowing 
houses, and brought into the treasury of the theatre twice the 
gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer, the Drury Lane 
Company went down to the Act at Oxford, and there, before 
an audience which retained an affectionate remembrance of 
Addison's accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted 
during several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the 
theatre in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the 
seats were filled. 



328 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

About the merits of the piece which had so extraordinary 
an effect, the pubUc, we suppose, has made up its mind. To 
compare it with the masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the 
great Enghsh dramas of the time of Ehzabeth, or even with 
the productions of Schiller's manhood, would be absurd indeed. 
Yet it contains excellent dialogue and declamation, and among 
plays fashioned on the French model must be allowed to rank 
high; not indeed with AtJialie, or Saul; but, we think, not 
below Cinna, and certainly above any other English tragedy 
of the same school, above many of the plays of Corneille, 
above many of the plays of Voltaire and Alfieri, and above 
some plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have little doubt 
that Cato did as much as the Tatlcrs, Spectators, and FrceJwldcrs 
united to raise Addison's fame among his contemporaries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist 
had tamed even the malignity of faction. But literary envy, 
it should seem, is a fiercer passion than party spirit. It was 
by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy 
was made. John Dennis published Remarks on Cato, which 
were written with some acuteness and with much coarseness 
and asperity. Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. 
On many points he had an excellent defence, and nothing 
would have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had 
written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies ; he had, more- 
over, a larger share than most men of those infirmities and 
eccentricities which excite laughter ; and Addison's power of 
turning either an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule 
was unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious of his 
superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose temper, 
naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by 
controversy, and by literary failures. 

But among the young candidates for Addison's favour there 
was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and distin- 
guished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincerity. Pope 
was only twenty-five. But his powers had expanded to their 
full maturity ; and his best poem, the Rape of the Lock, had 



ADDISON 329 

recently been published. Of his genius Addison had always 
expressed high admiration. But Addison had early discerned 
(what might indeed have been discerned by an eye less pene- 
trating than his) that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was 
eager to revenge himself on society for the unkindness of 
nature. In the Spectator, the Essay on Criticism had been 
praised with cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added 
that the writer of so excellent a poem would have done well 
to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evidently more 
galled by the censure than gratified by the praise, returned 
thanks for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. The 
two writers continued to exchange civilities, counsel, and small 
good offices. Addison publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous 
pieces ; and Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This 
did not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured 
without provocation. The appearance of the Remarks on Cato 
gave the irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice 
under the show of friendship ; and such an opportunity could 
not but be welcome to a nature which was implacable in enmity, 
and which always preferred the tortuous to the straight path. 
He published, accordingly, the Narrative of tJie Frenzy of John 
Denjiis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great 
master of invective and sarcasm. He could dissect a character 
in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis ; but of 
dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written 
a lampoon on Dennis such as that on Atticus or that on 
Sporus, the old gRimbler would have been crushed. But Pope 
writing dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's imagery and 
his own — a wolf which, instead of biting, should take to 
kicking, or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative 
is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not even the 
show ; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced into 
a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling gallery. 
Dennis raves about the drama, and the nurse thinks that he 
is calling for a dram. "There is," he cries, "no peripetia in 
the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at all." " Pray. 



330 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

good sir, be not angry," says the old woman; "I'll fetch 
change." This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this 
officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish 
and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and, if he were 
thought to have any hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted 
with incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never, even in 
self-defence, used those powers inhumanly or uncourteously ; 
and he was not disposed to let others make his fame and his 
interests a pretext under which they might commit outrages 
from which he had himself constantly abstained. He accord- 
ingly declared that he had no concern in the Narrative, that 
he disapproved of it, and that if he answered the Remarks, he 
would answer them like a gentleman ; and he took care to 
communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified ; and 
to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the hatred with 
which he ever after regarded Addison. 

In September, 171 3, the Guardian ceased to appear. Steele 
had gone mad about politics. A general election had just 
taken place : he had been chosen member for Stockbridge ; 
and he fully expected to play a first part in Parliament. The 
immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had turned his 
head. He had been the editor of both those papers and was 
not aware how entirely they owed their influence and popularity 
to the genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were 
now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch 
that he every day committed some offence against good sense 
and good taste. All the discreet and moderate members of his 
own party regretted and condemned his folly. "" I am in a 
thousand troubles," Addison wrote, "about poor Dick, and 
wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself. 
But he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and 
that any advice I may give him in this particular will have no 
weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called the Englishman, which, 
as it was not supported by contributions from Addison, 



ADDISON 331 

completely failed. By this work, by some other writings of the 
same kind, and by the airs which he gave himself at the first 
meeting of the new Parliament, he made the Tories so angry 
that they determined to expel him. The Whigs stood by him 
gallantly, but were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion 
was regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise 
of the power of the majority. But Steele's violence and folly, 
though they by no means justified the steps which his enemies 
took, had completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he ever 
regain the place which he had held in the public estimation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of adding an 
eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 17 14, the first number 
of the new series appeared, and during about six months three 
papers were published weekly. Nothing can be more striking 
than the contrast between the Englishman and the eighth 
volume of the Spectator, between Steele without Addison and 
Addison without Steele, The Englishman is forgotten ; the 
eighth volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, the finest 
essays, both serious and playful, in the English language. 

Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne 
produced an entire change in the administration of public 
affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory party 
distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for any great 
effort, Harley had just been disgraced, Bolingbroke, it was 
supposed, would be the chief Minister. But the Queen was 
on her death-bed before the white staff had been given, and 
her last public act was to deliver it with a feeble hand to the 
Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition 
between all sections of public men who were attached to the 
Protestant succession, George the First was proclaimed with- 
out opposition, A Council, in which the leading Whigs had 
seats, took the direction of affairs till the new King should 
arrive. The first act of the Lords Justices was to appoint 
Addison their secretary. 

There is an idle tradition that he was directed to prepare a 
letter to the King, that he could not satisfy himself as to the 



332 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

style of this composition, and that the Lords Justices called in 
a clerk who at once did what was wanted. It is not strange 
that a story so flattering to mediocrity should be popular ; and 
we are sorry to deprive dunces of their consolation. But the 
truth must be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mack- 
intosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that 
Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or elo- 
quence, and that his despatches are, without exception, remark- 
able for unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with 
what ease Addison's finest essays were produced must be con- 
vinced that, if well-turned phrases had been wanted, he would 
have had no difficulty in finding them. We are, however, 
inclined to believe, that the story is not absolutely without a 
foundation. It may well be that Addison did not know, till he 
had consulted experienced clerks who remembered the times 
when William the Third was absent on the Continent, in what 
form a letter from the Council of Regency to the King ought 
to be drawn. We think it very likely that the ablest states- 
men of our time — Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
Palmerston, for example — would, in similar circumstances, be 
found quite as ignorant. Every office has some little mysteries 
which the dullest man may learn with a little attention, and 
which the greatest man cannot possibly know by intuition. 
One paper must be signed by the chief of the department ; 
another by his deputy ; to a third the royal sign manual is 
necessary. One communication is to be registered, and another 
is not. One sentence must be in black ink and another in 
red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were moved to 
the India Board, if the ablest President of the India Board 
were moved to the War Office, he would require instruction 
on points like these ; and we do not doubt that Addison re- 
quired such instruction when he became, for the first time, 
Secretary to the Lords Justices. 

George the First took possession of his kingdom without 
opposition. A new Ministry was formed, and a new Parliament 
favourable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland was appointed 



ADDISON 333 

Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison again went to Dublin 
as Chief Secretary. 

At Dublin Swift resided ; and there was much speculation 
about the way in which the Dean and the Secretary would 
behave towards each other. The relations which existed 
between these remarkable men form an interesting and pleas- 
ing portion of literary history. They had early attached them- 
selves to the same political party and to the same patrons. 
While Anne's Whig Ministry was in power, the visits of Swift 
to London and the official residence of Addison in Ireland had 
given them opportunities of knowing each other. They were 
the two shrewdest observers of their age. But their observa- 
tions on each other had led them to favourable conclusions. 
Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation which 
were latent under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addi- 
son, on the other hand, discerned much good-nature under the 
severe look and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the Swift of 
1708 and the Swift of 1738 were two very different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The Whig 
statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. They praised 
Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. 
His profession laid them under a difficulty. In the State they 
could not promote him ; and they had reason to fear that, by 
bestowing preferment in the Church on the author of the Tale 
of a Tub, they might give scandal to the public, which had no 
high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair allow- 
ance for the difficulties which prevented Halifax and Somers 
from serving him, thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed 
honour and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and 
became their most formidable champion. He soon found, 
however, that his old friends were less to blame than he had 
supposed. The dislike with which the Queen and the heads of 
the Church regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with 
the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity 
of no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a 
country which he detested. 



334 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Difference of political opinion had produced, not indeed a 
quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addison. They at 
length ceased altogether to see each other. Yet there was 
between them a tacit compact like that between the hereditary 
guests in the Iliad: 

HoWol fjikv yap ifxol Tpwes kXcltol t eiriKovpoi 
KTCtVetv, ov Ke ^eds ye Troprj kol ttoctcti ki^elw, 
IIoAAoi o av (Tol 'A^atot ivaipificv, ov Ke Svprjai. 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and insulted 
nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted Swift. But 
it is remarkable that Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue 
was sacred, and who generally seemed to find, like most other 
renegades, a peculiar pleasure in attacking old friends, should 
have shown so much respect and tenderness to Addison. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the House of 
Hanover had secured in England the liberties of the people, 
and in Ireland the dominion of the Protestant caste. To that 
caste Swift was more odious than any other man. He was 
hooted and even pelted in the streets of Dublin ; and could 
not venture to ride along the strand for his health without the 
attendance of armed servants. Many whom he had formerly 
served now libelled and insulted him. At this time Addison 
arrived. He had been advised not to show the smallest civility 
to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had answered, with admirable 
spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose fidelity to their 
party was suspected to hold no intercourse with political oppo- 
nents ; but that one who had been a steady Whig in the worst 
times might venture when the good cause was triumphant to 
shake hands with an old friend who was one of the vanquished 
Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly 
wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists resumed 
their habits of friendly intercourse. 

Those associates of Addison whose political opinions agreed 
with his shared his good fortune. He took Tickell with him to 



ADDISON 335 

Ireland. He procured for Budgell a lucrative place in the same 
kingdom, Ambrose Philips was provided for in England. 
Steele had injured himself so much by his eccentricity and 
perverseness that he obtained but a very small part of what he 
thought his due. He was, however, knighted ; he had a place 
in the household ; and he subsequently received other marks 
of favour from the Court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he quitted 
his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. In the 
same year his comedy of the Drimmicr was brought on the 
stage. The name of the author was not announced ; the piece 
was coldly received ; and some critics had expressed a doubt 
whether it were really Addison's. To us the evidence, both 
external and internal, seems decisive. It is not in Addison's 
best manner ; but it contains numerous passages which no 
other writer known to us could have produced. It was again 
performed after Addison's death, and, being known to be his, 
was loudly applauded. 

Towards the close of the year 171 5, while the Rebellion 
was still raging in Scotland, Addison published the first num- 
ber of a paper called the Freeholder. Among his political 
works the Freeholder is entitled to the first place. Even in the 
Spectator there are few serious papers nobler than the charac- 
ter of his friend Lord Somers, and certainly no satirical papers 
superior to those in which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. 
This character is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn 
with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of which Fielding 
was altogether destitute. As none of Addison's works exhibits 
stronger marks of his genius than the Freeholder, so none does 
more honour to his moral character. It is difficult to extol too 
highly the candour and humanity of a political writer whom 
even the excitement of civil war cannot hurry into unseemly 
violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then the stronghold 
of Toryism, The High Street had been repeatedly lined with 
bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen ; 
and traitors pursued by the messengers of the Government 



336 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

had been concealed in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the 
admonition which, even under such circumstances, Addison 
addressed to the University, is singularly gentle, respectful, and 
even affectionate. Indeed, he could not find it in his heart 
to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, 
though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good fellow, 
and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the King. Steele 
was dissatisfied with his friend's moderation, and, though he 
acknowledged that the FrccJwldcr was excellently written, com- 
plained that the Ministry played on a lute when it was necessary 
to blow the truhipet. He accordingly determined to execute a 
flourish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse the public 
spirit of the nation by means of a paper called the Toivn Talk, 
which is now as utterly forgotten as his Englishman, as his 
Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridgc, as his Reader — 
in short, as everything that he wrote without the help of Addison. 

In the same year in which the Drummer was acted, and in 
which the first numbers of the Freeholder appeared, the es- 
trangement of Pope and Addison became complete. Addison 
had from the first seen that Pope was false and malevolent. 
Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. The discovery 
was made in a strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of 
the Lock in two cantos without supernatural machinery. These 
two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by none more 
loudly than by Addison. Then Pope thought of the Sylphs 
and Gnomes — Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel — and 
resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the orig- 
inal fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said that the 
poem as it stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated 
Pope not to run the risk of marring what was so excellent in 
trying to mend it. Pope afterwards declared that this insidious 
counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most ingen- 
ious, and that he afterwards executed it with great skill and 
success. But does it necessarily follow that Addison's advice 
was bad .? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily 



ADDISON 337 

follow that it was given from bad motives ? If a friend were 
to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all in a 
lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him, we 
should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. 
Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound 
prize, we should not admit that we had counselled him ill ; 
and we should certainly think it the height of injustice in him 
to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. We think 
Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, 
the result of long and wide experience. The general rule un- 
doubtedly is that when a successful work of imagination has 
been produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this 
moment call to mind a single instance in which this rule has 
been transgressed with happy effect, except the instance of the 
Rape of tJic Lock. Tasso recast \\\s Jerusalem. Akenside recast 
his Pleasures of the Imagination and his Epistle to Curio. 
Pope himself — emboldened no doubt by the success with which 
he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock — made 
the same experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts 
failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would, once in his life, 
be able to do what he could not himself do twice, and what 
nobody else has ever done ? 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why should 
we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us that one of his best 
friends predicted the failure of Wave7iey. Herder adjured 
Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Fa7ist. Hume 
tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles 
the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was one of those who prophe- 
sied that Cato would never succeed on the stage, and advised 
Addison to print it without risking a representation. But Scott, 
Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and gener- 
osity to give their advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's 
heart was not of the same kind with theirs. 

In 171 5, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, he 
met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips and Budgell were 
there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, and asked Pope to 



338 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

dine with him alone. After dinner Addison said that he lay 
under a difficulty which he wished to explain. " Tickell," he 
said, " translated some time ago the first book of the Iliad. I 
have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot there- 
fore ask to see yours ; for that would be double-dealing." Pope 
made a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have 
the advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily agreed, 
looked over the second book, and sent it back with warm 
commendations. 

Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after this 
conversation. In the preface all rivalry was earnestly disclaimed. 
Tickell declared that he should not go on with the Iliad. That 
enterprise he should leave to powers which he admitted to be 
superior to his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this 
specimen was to bespeak the favour of the public to a trans- 
lation of the Odyssey in which he had made some progress. 

Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced both 
the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had more of 
the original. The town gave a decided preference to Pope's. 
We do not think it worth while to settle such a question of 
precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said to have trans- 
lated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used 
in the sense which it bears in the Midsimimer NigJif s Dream. 
When Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head in- 
stead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "' Bless thee ! Bottom, 
bless thee ! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the 
readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, 
" Bless thee ! Homer, thou art translated indeed." 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that 
no man in Addison's situation could have acted more fairly 
and kindly, both towards Pope and towards Tickell, than he 
appears to have done. But an odious suspicion had sprung 
up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly 
believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame 
and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his 
reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription on which 



ADDISON 339 

rested his hopes of a competence was to be defeated. With 
this view Addison had made a rival translation ; Tickell had 
consented to father it ; and the wits of Button's had united 
to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this grave accusa- 
tion ? The answer is short. There is absolutely none. 

Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison to 
be the author of this version .? Was it a work which Tickell 
was incapable of producing .? Surely not. Tickell was a 
Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be supposed to 
have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better 
versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pre- 
tended to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar 
to Addison. Had such turns of expression been discovered, 
they would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addison 
to have corrected his friend's lines, as he owned that he 
had done. 

Is there anything in the character of the accused persons 
which makes the accusation probable .? We answer confidently 
— nothing. Tickell was long after this time described by 
Pope himself as a very fair and worthy man. Addison had 
been during many years before the public. Literary rivals, 
political opponents, had kept their eyes on him. But neither 
envy nor faction, in its utmost rage, had ever imputed to 
him a single deviation from the laws of honour and of social 
morality. Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, 
and capable of stooping to base and wicked arts for the purpose 
of injuring his competitors, would his vices have remained 
latent so long .? He was a writer of tragedy : had he ever 
injured Rowe ? He was a writer of comedy : had he not 
done ample justice to Congreve, and given valuable help to 
Steele 1 He was a pamphleteer : have not his good nature 
and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in fame 
and his adversary in politics } 

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to 
us highly improbable. That Addison should have been guilty 



340 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

of a villany seems to us highly improbable. But that these 
two men should have conspired together to commit a villany 
seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All that is 
known to us of their intercourse tends to prove that it was 
not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are 
some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow 
over the cofifin of Addison : 

Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms. 
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more. 

In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian 
genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the Editor of 
the Satifist would hardly dare to propose to the Editor of 
the Age } 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he 
knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he 
believed it to be true ; and the evidence on which he believed 
it he found in his own bad heart. His own life was one long 
series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of which he 
suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. 
To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the conse- 
quences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was 
the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of 
Chandos ; he was taxed with it, and he lied and equivocated. 
He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with 
it, and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler 
lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague ; he was taxed 
with it, and he lied with more than usual effrontery and 
vehemence. He puffed himself and abused his enemies under 
feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and 



ADDISON 341 

then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds 
of mahgnity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were 
frauds which he seems to have committed from love of fraud 
alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting 
all who came near him. Whatever his object might be, the 
indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Boling- 
broke Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as 
it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope 
was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive 
except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act 
of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man as this 
should attribute to others that which he felt within himself. 
A plain, probable, coherent explanation is frankly given to 
him. He is certain that it is all a romance. A line of conduct 
scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued towards him. 
He is convinced that it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue 
by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask 
him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those 
which he carries in his own bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison to 
retaliate for the first and last time cannot now be known with 
certainty. We have only Pope's story, which runs thus : A 
pamphlet appeared containing some reflections which stung 
Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, and whether 
they were reflections of which he had a right to complain, we 
have now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a 
foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feel- 
ings with which such lads generally regard their best friends, 
told Pope, truly or falsely, that this pamphlet had been written 
by Addison's direction. When we consider what a tendency 
stories have to grow in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and when we consider that to the name 
of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a 
claim, we are not disposed to attach much importance to this 
anecdote. 



342 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had 
already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In his 
anger he turned this prose into the brilhant and energetic hnes 
which everybody knows by heart, or ought to l^now by heart, 
and sent them to Addison. One charge which Pope has 
enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation. 
Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding 
over a circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations 
which these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely one 
has ever been proved to be just, and some are certainly false. 
That Addison was not in the habit of " damning with faint 
praise " appears from innumerable passages in his writings, 
and from none more than from those in which he mentions 
Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe 
a man who made the fortune of almost every one of his 
intimate friends as "so obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly we 
cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the weak- 
nesses with which he was reproached is highly probable. But 
his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part 
of the accusation. He acted like himself. As a satirist he 
was, at his own weapons, more than Pope's match ; and he 
would have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and diseased 
body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind ; 
spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent 
and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. 
Joseph Surface ; a feeble sickly licentiousness ; an odious love 
of filthy and noisome images — these were things which a genius 
less powerful than that to which we owe the Spectator could 
easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind. 
Addison had, moreover, at his command, other means of 
vengeance which a bad man would not have scrupled to use. 
He was powerful in the State. Pope was a Catholic ; and in 
those times a Minister would have found it easy to harass the 
most innocent Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, 
near twenty years later, said that " through the lenity of the 



ADDISON 343 

Government alone he could live with comfort." " Consider," 
he exclaimed, "the injury that a man of high rank and credit 
may do to a private person, under penal laws and many other 
disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the only revenge 
which Addison took was to insert in the FrceJiolder a warm 
encomium on the translation of the Iliad, and to exhort all 
lovers of learning to put down their names as subscribers. 
There could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already 
published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much 
for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time 
to the end of his life he always treated Pope, by Pope's own 
acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, of course, at 
an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the 
ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion may have been 
his dislike of the marriage which was about to take place be- 
tween his mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a 
daughter of the old and honourable family of the Middletons 
of Chirk — a family which in any country but ours would be 
called noble — resided at Holland House. Addison had, during 
some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the 
abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, 
and Holland House may be called a town residence. But in 
the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sports- 
men wandered between green hedges and over fields bright 
with daisies from Kensington almost to the shore of the 
Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country neigh- 
bours, and became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar 
tried to allure the young Lord from the fashionable amuse- 
ments of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling 
women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of 
letters and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions 
did little good, however, either to the disciple or to the master. 
Lord Warwick grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. The 
mature beauty of the Countess has been celebrated by poets 
in language which, after a very large allowance has been made 



344 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

for flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a fine 
woman ; and her rank doubtless heightened her attractions. 
The courtship was long. The hopes of the lover appear to 
have risen and fallen with the fortunes of his party. His 
attachment was at length a matter of such notoriety that, when 
he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe addressed some con- 
solatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us 
as a little strange that in these verses Addison should be 
called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain 
just about to cross St. George's Channel. 

At length Cbloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able to 
treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to expect pre- 
ferment even higher than that which he had attained. He 
had inherited the fortune of a brother who died Governor of 
Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and 
had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable verse by 
one of the neighbouring squires — the poetical fox-hunter, 
William Somerville. In August, 1716, the newspapers an- 
nounced that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many 
excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused the 
Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House — a house which 
can boast of a greater number of inmates distinguished in 
political and literary history than any other private dwelling 
in England. His portrait still hangs there. The features are 
pleasing ; the complexion is remarkably fair ; but in the 
expression, we trace rather the gentleness of his disposition 
than the force and keenness of his intellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height of civil 
greatness. The Whig Government had, during some time, 
been torn by internal dissensions. Lord Townshend led one 
section of the Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At length, 
in the spring of i/r/, Sunderland triumphed. Townshend 
retired from office, and was accompanied by Walpole and 
Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; 
and Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain 



ADDISON 345 

that the Seals were pressed upon him, and were at first de- 
chned by him. Men equally versed in official business might 
easily have been found ; and his colleagues knew that they 
could not expect assistance from him in debate. He owed 
his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to 
his literary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his 
health began to fail. From one serious attack he recovered 
in the autumn ; and his recovery was celebrated in Latin 
verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, who was 
then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon took 
place ; and in the following spring Addison was prevented 
by a severe asthma from discharging the duties of his post. 
He resigned it, and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, a 
young man whose natural parts, though little improved by 
cultivation, were quick and showy, whose graceful person and 
winning manners had made him generally acceptable in society, 
and who, if he had lived, would probably have been the most 
formidable of all the rivals of Walpole. 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The Ministers, there- 
fore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring pension of 
fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what form this pension 
was given we are not told by the biographers, and have not 
time to inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not vacate 
his seat in the House of Commons. 

Rest of mind and body seem to have re-established his 
health ; and he thanked God with cheerful piety for having 
set him free both from his office and from his asthma. Many 
years seemed to be before him, and he meditated many works — 
a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a 
treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last perform- 
ance a part, which we could well spare, has come down to us. 

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually pre- 
vailed against all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy 
to think that the last months of such a life should have been 
overclouded both by domestic and by political vexations. A 



346 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

tradition which began early, which has been generally received, 
and to which we have nothing to oppose, has represented his 
wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said that, till 
his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the Countess 
Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, blazing with the 
gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he 
could enjoy a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a 
bottle of claret with the friends of his happier days. All those 
friends, however, were not left to him. Sir Richard Steele 
had been gradually estranged by various causes. He considered 
himself as one who, in evil times, had braved martyrdom for 
his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig party 
was triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suffered 
when it was militant. The, Whig leaders took a very different 
view of his claims. They thought that he had, by his own 
petulance and folly, brought them as well as himself into 
trouble, and, though they did not absolutely neglect him, doled 
out favours to him with a sparing hand. It was natural that he 
should be angry with them, and especially angry with Addison. 
But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was 
the elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison 
Under-Secretary of State ; while the editor of the Tatlcr and 
Spectator, the author of the Crisis, and member for Stock- 
bridge who had been persecuted for firm adherence to the 
House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced, after many so- 
licitations and complaints, to content himself with a share in 
the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, in his 
celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference 
of Tickell, " incurred the warmest resentment of other gentle- 
men"; and everything seems to indicate that, of those resent- 
ful gentlemen, Steele was himself one. 

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he consid- 
ered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of quarrel arose. 
The Whig party, already divided against itself, was rent by a 
new schism. The celebrated Bill for limiting the number of 
Peers had been brought in. The proud Duke of Somerset, 



ADDISON 347 

first in rank of all the nobles whose religion permitted them 
to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the measure. 
But it was supported, and in truth devised, by the Prime 
Minister, 

We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious ; and we 
fear that the motives which induced Sunderland to frame it 
were not honourable to him. But we cannot deny that it was 
supported by many of the best and wisest men of that age. 
Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative had, within the 
memory of the generation then in the vigour of life, been so 
grossly abused that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, 
when the peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is con- 
sidered, may perhaps be called immoderate. The particular 
prerogative of creating peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, 
been grossly abused by Queen Anne's last Ministry ; and even 
the Tories admitted that her Majesty, in swamping, as it has 
since been called, the Upper House, had done what only an 
extreme case could justify. The theory of the English consti- 
tution, according to many high authorities, was that three 
independent powers — the sovereign, the nobility, and the 
commons — ought constantly to act as checks on each other. 
If this theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one 
of these powers under the absolute control of the other two 
was absurd. But if the number of peers were unlimited, it 
could not well be denied that the Upper House was under the 
absolute control of the Crown and the Commons, and was 
indebted only to their moderation for any power which it might 
be suffered to retain. 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with the 
Ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, vehemently 
attacked the bill. Sunderland called for help on Addison, and 
Addison obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old Whig, he 
answered, and indeed refuted, Steele's arguments. It seems to 
us that the premises of both the controversialists were unsound ; 
that on those premises Addison reasoned well and Steele ill ; 
and that consequently Addison brought out a false conclusion 



348 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

while Steele blundered upon the truth. In style, in wit, and 
in politeness, Addison maintained his superiority, though the 
Old Whig is by no means one of his happiest performances. 

At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the laws 
of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot himself as to 
throw an odious imputation on the morals of the chiefs of the 
administration. Addison replied with severity, but, in our 
opinion, with less severity than was due to so grave an offence 
against morality and decorum ; nor did he, in his just anger, 
forget for a moment the laws of good taste and good breeding. 
One calumny which has been often repeated, and never yet 
•contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted in the 
Biographia Britannica that Addison designated Steele as 
" little Dicky." This assertion was repeated by Johnson, who 
had never seen the Old Whig, and was therefore excusable. 
It has also been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has seen the 
Old Whig, and for whom therefore there is less excuse. Now, 
it is true that the words " little Dicky " occur in the Old Whig, 
and that Steele's name was Richard. It is equally true that 
the words "little Isaac" occur in the Ditenna, and that New- 
ton's name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Addison's 
" little Dicky " had no more to do with Steele than Sheridan's 
"little Isaac" with Newton. If we apply the words "little 
Dicky " to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious pas- 
sage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little 
Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remark- 
ably small stature, but of great humour, who played the usurer 
Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's SpanisJi Fnar} 

1 We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can ever have been 
misunderstood is unintelligible to us. 

But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, whom he repre- 
sents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by losing this prerogative, would be 
less able to protect them against the power of a House of Lords. Who forbears laughing 
when the Spanish Friar represents little Dicky, under the person of Gomez, insulting 
the Colonel that was able to fright him out of his wits with a single frown ? This Gomez, 
says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong in him, and 
gave him bastinado on bastinado, and buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being 
prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability of the fact never 



ADDISON 349 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, though 
softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled him 
bitterly. He replied with little force and great acrimony ; but 
no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast hastening to his 
grave ; and had, we may well suppose, little disposition to 
prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. His complaint had 
terminated in dropsy. He bore up long and manfully. But 
at length he abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and 
calmly prepared himself to die. 

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedicated 
them a very few days before his death to Craggs, in a letter 
written with the sweet and graceful eloquence of a Saturday's 
Spectator. In this his last composition, he alluded to his 
approaching end in words so manly, so cheerful, and so tender 
that it is difficult to read them without tears. At the same 
time he earnestly recommended the interests of Tickell to the 
care of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedication was 
written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then living by his 
wits about town, to come to Holland House. Gay went, and 
was received with great kindness. To his amazement his for- 
giveness was implored by the dying man. Poor Gay, the most 
good-natured and simple of mankind, could not imagine what 
he had to forgive. There was, however, some wrong, the 
remembrance of which weighed on Addison's mind, and which 
he declared himself anxious to repair. He was in a state of 
extreme exhaustion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly 
one on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to serve him 
had been in agitation at Court, and had been frustrated by 
Addison's influence. Nor is this improbable. Gay had paid 
assiduous court to the royal family. But in the Queen's days 
he had been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still connected 
with many Tories. It is not strange that Addison, while heated 

fails to raise mirth in the audience; and one may venture to answer for a British House 
of Commons, if we may guess from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either 
SO tame or so weak as our author supposes. 



350 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

by conflict, should have thought himself justified in obstructing 
the preferment of one whom he might regard as a political 
enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing his whole 
life and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should think 
that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part in using his 
power against a distressed man of letters' who was as harmless 
and as helpless as a child. 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It appears 
that Addison, on his death-bed, called himself to a strict account, 
and was not at ease till he had asked pardon for an injury which 
it was not evea suspected that he had committed, for an injury 
which would have caused disquiet only to a very tender con- 
science. Is it not then reasonable to infer that, if he had 
really been guilty of forming a base conspiracy against the 
fame and fortunes of a rival, he would have expressed some 
remorse for so serious a crime ? But it is unnecessary to 
multiply arguments and evidence for the defence when there 
is neither argument nor evidence for the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. His 
interview with his step-son is universally known. " See," he 
said, '' how a Christian can die ! " The piety of Addison was, 
in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The feeling which 
predominates in all his devotional writings, is gratitude. God 
was to him the all-wise and all-powerful Friend who had watched 
over his cradle with more than maternal tenderness ; who had 
listened to his cries before they could form themselves in 
prayer ; who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; 
who had made his cup run over with worldly blessings ; who 
had doubled the value of those blessings by bestowing a 
thankful heart to enjoy them and dear friends to partake 
them ; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian gulf, had 
purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, and had restrained 
the avalanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favourite 
was that which represents the Ruler of all things under the 
endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook guides the flock 
safe, through gloomy and desolate glens to meadows well 



ADDISON 351 

watered and rich with herbage. On that Goodness to which 
he ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in the hour 
of death with the love which casteth out fear. He died on 
the seventeenth of June, 17 19. He had just entered on his 
forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was 
borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. The choir sang 
a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, one of those Tories who 
had loved and honoured the most accomplished of the Whigs, 
met the corpse, and led the procession by torchlight, round 
the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves of the Plantagenets, 
to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. On the north side of 
that Chapel, in the vault of the House of Albemarle, the coffin 
of Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet a few 
months, and the same mourners passed again along the same 
aisle. The same sad anthem was again chanted. The same 
vault was again opened ; and the coffin of Craggs was placed 
close to the coffin of Addison. 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison ; but 
one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his friend in 
an elegy which would do honour to the greatest name in our 
literature, and which unites the energy and magnificence of 
Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper. This fine 
poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addison's works 
which was published, in 1721, by subscription. The names of 
the subscribers proved how widely his fame had been spread. 
That his countrymen should be eager to possess his writings, 
even in a costly form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful 
that, though English literature was then little studied on the 
Continent, Spanish Grandees, Italian Prelates, Marshals of 
France, should be found in the list. Among the most remark- 
able names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of Prince 
Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes of 
Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the 
Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to add 
that this edition, though eminently beautiful, is in some 



352 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

important points defective ; nor, indeed, do we yet possess 
a complete collection of Addison's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, nor 
any of his powerful and attached friends, should have thought 
of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on 
the walls of the Abbey. It was not till three generations had 
laughed and wept over his pages that the omission was supplied 
by the public veneration. At length, in our own time, his 
image, skilfully graven, appeared in Poet's Corner. It represents 
him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing-gown, and 
freed from his wig, stepping from his parlour at Chelsea into 
his trim little garden, with the account of the "Everlasting 
Club," or the "Loves of Hilpa and Shalum," just finished for 
the next day's Spectator, in his hand. Such a mark of national 
respect was due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished 
scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the con- 
summate painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, 
to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without 
abusing it ; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great 
social reform ; and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long 
and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray 
by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

(a) William and Mary 

The place which WilUam Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, 
occupies in the history of England and of mankind is so great 
that it may be desirable to portray with some minuteness the 
strong lineaments of his character.^ 

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body 
and in mind he was older than other men of the same age. 
Indeed it might be said that he had never been young. His 
external appearance is almost as well known to us as to his 
own captains and counsellors. Sculptors, painters, and medal- 
lists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his 
features to posterity ; and his features were such as no artist 
could fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be 
forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and 
feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like 
the beak of an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an eagle in bright- 
ness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a 
firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and 
deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, 
and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or 
a good-humoured man. But it indicates, in a manner not to be 
mistaken, capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and 
fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers. 

^ The chief materials from which I have taken my description of the 
Prince of Orange will be found in Burnet's History, in Temple's and 
Gourville's Memoirs, in the Negotiations of the Counts of Estrades and 
Avaux, in Sir George Downing's Letters to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, in 
Wagenaar's voluminous History, in Van Kamper's Karakterkunde der Vader- 
landsche Geschiedenis, and, above all, in William's own confidential corre- 
spondence, of which the Duke of Portland permitted Sir James Mackintosh 
to take a copy. 

353 



354 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a 
great ruler ; and education had developed those qualities in no 
common degree. With strong natural sense, and rare force of 
will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, 
a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but 
depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and 
indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of 
the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The 
common people, fondly attached during a century to his house, 
indicated, whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mis- 
taken, that they- regarded him as their rightful head. The able 
and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of 
his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to 
him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first move- 
ments of his ambition were carefully watched : every unguarded 
word uttered by him was noted down ; nor had he near him 
any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He 
was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who 
were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his 
confidence, were removed from under his roof by the jealous 
government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, 
but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once 
rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health, 
naturally delicate, sank fey a time under the emotions which 
his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder 
and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the 
strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth 
would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily 
and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how 
to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded 
answers, how to conceal all passions under the same show of 
grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little proficiency in 
fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the 
Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found 
in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, 
and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the Court of 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 355 

England ; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his 
countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed 
churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he 
appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the 
value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. He 
was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of 
Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were 
unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him ; and he 
was glad to turn away from the stage and to talk about public 
affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was press- 
ing Elmira's hand. He had indeed some talent for sarcasm, 
and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhet- 
oric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, 
however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an 
orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which 
form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child 
he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, 
finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as 
much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a 
hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly 
powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him 
to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that 
was said to him, and every letter which he received. The 
Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and 
Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English, and German, 
inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intel- 
ligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man 
whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and 
in commanding armies assembled from different countries. 

One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his 
attention by circumstances, and see;ms to have interested him 
more than might have been expected from his general char- 
acter. Among the Protestants of the United Provinces, as 
among the Protestants of our island, there were two great 
religious parties which almost exactly coincided with two great 
political parties. The chiefs of the municipal oligarchy were 



356 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Arminians, and were commonly regarded by the multitude as 
little better than Papists. The princes of Orange had generally 
been the patrons of the Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small 
part of their popularity to their zeal for the doctrines of elec- 
tion and final perseverance, a zeal not always enlightened by 
knowledge or tempered by humanity, William had been care- 
fully instructed from a child in the theological system to which 
his family was attached ; and he regarded that system with even 
more than the partiality which men generally feel for a hered- 
itary faith. He had ruminated on the great enigmas which 
had been discussed in the Synod of Dort, and had found in 
the austere and inflexible logic of the Genevese school some- 
thing which suited his intellect and his temper. That example 
of intolerance, indeed, which some of his predecessors had set 
he never imitated. For all persecutjon he felt a fixed aversion, 
which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously 
politic, but on occasions where it seemed that his interest 
would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His 
theological opinions, however, were even more decided than 
those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the 
keystone of his religion. He often declared that, if he were 
to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in a 
superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicu- 
rean. Except in this single instance, all the sap of his vigor- 
ous mind was early drawn away from the speculative to the 
practical. The faculties which are necessary for the conduct 
of important business ripened in him at a time of life when 
they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since 
Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious 
statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the 
weighty observations which at seventeen the Prince made on 
public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situa- 
tions in which he might have been expected to betray strong 
passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. 
At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the commonwealth, 
grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 357 

twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the 
head of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned 
throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had put 
domestic factions under his feet : he was the soul of a mighty 
coalition ; and he had contended with honour in the field 
against some of the greatest generals of the age. 

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a 
statesman : but he, like his great-grandfather, the silent prince 
who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far 
higher place among statesmen than among warriors. The 
event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test of the abilities 
of a commander ; and it would be peculiarly unjust to apply 
this test to William ; for it was his fortune to be almost 
always opposed to captains who were consummate masters of 
their art, and to troops far superior in discipline to his own. 
Yet there is reason to believe that he was by no means equal, 
as a general in the field, to some who ranked far below him 
in intellectual powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on 
this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man who 
had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowl- 
edge some deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an 
apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been placed, 
while still a boy, at the head of an army. Among his officers 
there had been none competent to instruct him. His own 
blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons. 
"I would give," he once exclaimed, "a good part of my 
estates to have served a few campaigns under the Prince of 
Conde before I had to command against him," It is not 
improbable that the circumstance which prevented William 
from attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have 
been favourable to the general vigour of his intellect. If his 
battles were not those of a great tactician, they entitled him 
to be called a great man. No disaster could for one moment 
deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of all 
his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such marvellous 
celerity that before his enemies had sung the Te Deum he 



358 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

was again ready for conflict ; nor did his adverse fortune ever 
deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. 
That respect and confidence he owed in no small measure, to 
his personal courage. Courage, in the degree which is neces- 
sary to carry a soldier without disgrace through a campaign, 
is possessed, or might, under proper training, be acquired, by 
the great majority of men. But courage like that of William 
is rare indeed. He was proved by every test ; by war, by 
wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, 
by the imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk 
which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely 
tried even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none 
could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of 
Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him 
to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of 
conspirators,! Old sailors were amazed at the composure 
which he preserved amidst roaring breakers on a perilous 
coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous even 
among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew forth the 
generous applause of hostile armies, and was scarcely ever 
questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions. During his 
first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for 
death, was always foremost in the charge and last in the 
retreat, fought, sword in hand, in the thickest press, and, with 
a musket ball in his arm and the blood streaming over his 
cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his hat under the 
hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of a 
life invaluable to his country ; and his most illustrious antago- 
nist, the great Conde, remarked, after the bloody day of 

^ William was earnestly intreated by his friends, after the peace of 
Ryswick, to speak seriously to the French ambassador about the schemes 
of assassination which the Jacobites of St. Germains were constantly con- 
triving. The cold magnanimity with which these intimations of danger 
were received is singularly characteristic. To Bentinck, who had sent from 
Paris very alarming intelligence, William merely replied, at the end of a long 
letter of business, — "Pour les assasins je ne luy en ay pas voulu parler, 
croiant que c'etoit au desous de moy." May y%. 1698. I keep the original 
orthography, if it is to be so called. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 359 

Seneff, that the Prince of Orange had in all things borne 
himself like an old general, except in exposing himself like a 
young soldier. William denied that he was guilty of temerity. 
It was, he said, from a sense of duty, and on a cool calculation 
of what the public interest required, that he was always at the 
post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been 
little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the 
veteran soldiery of France. It was necessary that their leader 
should show them how battles were to be won. And in truth 
more than one day which had seemed hopelessly lost was 
retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his broken 
battalions and cut down with his own hand the cowards who 
set the example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that 
he had a strange pleasure in venturing his person. It was 
remarked that hig spirits were never so high and his manners 
never so gracious and easy as amidst the tumult and carnage 
of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the excitement of 
danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure. 
The chase was his favourite recreation ; and he loved it most 
when it was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such 
that his boldest companions did not like to follow him. He 
seems even to have thought the most hardy field sports of 
England effeminate, and to have pined in the Great Park of 
Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to 
bay in the forests of Guelders — wolves, and wild boars, and 
huge stags with sixteen antlers, ^ 

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because 
his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child 
he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his 
complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of smallpox. 

1 From Windsor he wrote to Bentinck, then ambassador at Paris. "J'ay 
pris avant hier un cerf dans la forest avec les chains du Pr. de Denm. 
et ay fait un assez joHe chasse, autant que ce vilain paiis le permest." 
^^'^^^ '°- 1698. The spelling is bad, but not worse than Napoleon's. William 
wrote in better humour from Loo. " Nous avons pris deux gros cerfs, le 
premier dans Dorewaert, qui est un des plus gros que je sache avoir jamais 
pris. II porte seize." ^pi^ 1697. 



36o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was 
shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep 
unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could 
scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel 
headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued 
him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his 
enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were 
anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his 
broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which 
was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on 
any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body. 
He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities : 
but the strength of his emotions was not suspected by the 
world. From the multitude his joy and his grief, his affection 
and his resentment, were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity 
which made him pass for the most cold-blooded of mankind. 
Those who brought him good news could seldom detect any 
sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in 
vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, 
rewarded and punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mo- 
hawk chief : but those who knew him well and saw him near 
were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire was constantly 
burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power 
over himself. But when he was really enraged the first out- 
break of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe 
to approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon 
as he regained his self-command, he made such ample repara- 
tion to those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish 
that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as 
impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the 
whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him 
from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies 
trembled for his reason and his life. To a very small circle 
of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could abso- 
lutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and 
stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 361 

of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even con- 
vivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would 
bear his full share in festive conversation. Highest in his 
favour stood a gentleman of his household named Bentinck, 
sprung from a noble Batavian race, and destined to be the 
founder of one of the great patrician houses of England. 
The fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. 
It was while the United Provinces were struggling for exist- 
ence against the French power that the young Prince on 
whom all their hopes were fixed was seized by the smallpox. 
That disease had been fatal to many members of his family, 
and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly malignant aspect. 
The public consternation was great. The streets of the Hague 
were crowded from daybreak to sunset by persons anxiously 
asking how his Highness was. At length his complaint took 
a favourable turn. His escape was attributed partly to his own 
singular equanimity, and partly to the intrepid and indefati- 
gable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck 
alone William took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone 
William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. 
"Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill," said 
William to Temple, with great tenderness, "' I know not. 
But this I know, that, through sixteen days and nights, I 
never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly 
at my side." Before the faithful servant had entirely per- 
formed his task, he had himself caught the contagion. Still, 
however, he bore up against drowsiness and fever till his master 
was pronounced convalescent. Then, at length, Bentinck asked 
leave to go home. It was time : for his limbs would no longer 
support him. He was in great danger, but recovered, and, as 
soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, where, during 
many sharp campaigns, he was ever found, as he had been in 
peril of a different kind, close to William's side. 

Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as 
any that ancient or modern history records. The descendants 
of Bentinck still preserve many letters written by William to 



362 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

their ancestor : and it is not too much to say that no person 
who has not studied those letters can form a correct notion of 
the Prince's character. He whom even his admirers generally 
accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets all 
distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the 
ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without reserve 
secrets of the highest moment. He explains with perfect sim-" 
plicity vast designs affecting all the governments of Europe. 
Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other 
communications of a very different, but perhaps not of a less 
interesting, kind. All his adventures, all his personal feel- 
ings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals on 
St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of 
his melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy 
pad nag for his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his 
household, after ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry 
her, his fits of seasickness, his coughs, his headaches, his de- 
votional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a 
great escape, his struggles to submit himself to the divine will 
after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly 
to have been expected from the most discreet and sedate states- 
man of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion 
of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes 
in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is bom to 
Bentinck, " he will live, I hope," says William, " to be as good 
a fellow as you are ; and, if I should have a son, our chil- 
dren will love each other, I hope, as we have done." ^ Through 
life he continues to regard the little Bentincks with paternal 
kindness. He calls them by endearing diminutives : he takes 
charge of them in their father's absence, and, though vexed at 
being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not suffer them 
to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a push 
from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper.^ 

^ March 3. 1679. 

2 " Voila en peu de mot le detail de nostre St. Hubert. Et j'ay eu soin que 
M. Woodstoc " (Bentinck's eldest son) " n'a point este h. la chasse, bien moin 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 363 

When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, 
William, in the midst of business of the highest moment, finds 
time to send off several expresses in one day with short notes 
containing intelligence of her state.^ On one occasion, when 
she is pronounced out of danger after a severe attack, the 
Prince breaks forth into fervent expressions of gratitude to 
God. "I write," he says, "with tears of joy in my eyes."^ 
There is a singular charm in such letters, penned by a man 
whose irresistible energy and inflexible firmness extorted the 
respect of his enemies, whose cold and ungracious demeanour 
repelled the attachment of almost all his partisans, and whose 
mind was occupied by gigantic schemes which have changed 
the face of the world. 

His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early pro- 
nounced by Temple to be the best and truest servant that ever 
prince had the good fortune to possess, and continued through 
life to merit that honourable character. The friends were in- 
deed made for each other. William wanted neither a guide 
nor a flatterer. Having a firm and just reliance on his own 
judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much in 
suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much 
discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified 
by sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a 
man, not of inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave 
and faithful, capable of executing orders punctually, of keeping 
secrets inviolably, of observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting 
them truly ; and such a man was Bentinck. 

William was not less fortunate in marriage than in friend- 
ship. Yet his marriage had not at first promised much domes- 
tic happiness. His choice had been determined chiefly by 
political considerations : nor did it seem likely that any strong 
affection would grow up between a handsome girl of sixteen, 

au soupe, quoyqu'il fut icy. Vous pouvez pourtant croire que de n'avoir pas 
chasse I'a un peu mortifie, mais je ne I'ay pas ause prendre sur moy, puisque 
vous m'aviez dit que vous ne le souhaitiez pas." From Loo, Nov. 4. 1679. 
1 On the 15th of June, 1688. 2 Sept. 6. 1679. 



364 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

well disposed indeed, and naturally intelligent, but ignorant 
and simple, and a bridegroom who, though he had not com- 
pleted his twenty-eighth year, was in constitution older than 
her father, whose manner was chilling, and whose head was 
constantly occupied by public business or by field sports. For a 
time William was a negligent husband. He was indeed drawn 
away from his wife by other women, particularly by one of her 
ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though destitute of personal at- 
tractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents 
which well fitted her to partake his cares.^ He was indeed 
ashamed of his- errors, and spared no pains to conceal them: 
but, in spite of all his precautions, Mary well knew that he 
was not strictly faithful to her. Spies and tale-bearers, encour- 
aged by her father, did their best to inflame her resentment. 
A man of a very different character, the excellent Ken, who 
was her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was so 
much incensed by her wrongs that he, wjth more zeal than dis- 
cretion, threatened to reprimand her husband severely.^ She, 
however, bore her injuries with a meekness and patience which 
deserved, and gradually obtained, William's esteem and grati- 
tude. Yet there still remained one cause of estrangement. A 
time would probably come when the Princess, who had been 
educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinet, and 
to read the Bible and the Whole Duty of Man, would be the 
chief of a great monarchy, and would hold the balance of 
Europe, while her lord, ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent 
on great enterprises, would find in the British government no 
place marked out for him, and would hold power only from her 
bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange that a man 
so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius 
for command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, 
during a few hours of royalty, put dissension between Guild- 
ford Dudley and the Lady Jane, and which produced a rupture 

1 See Swift's account of her in the Journal to Stella. 

2 Henry Sidney's Journal of March 31. 1680, in Mr. Blencowe's interesting 
collection. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 365 

still more tragical between Darnley and the Queen of Scots. 
The Princess of Orange had not the faintest suspicion of her 
husband's feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had in- 
structed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded 
her mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had 
left her profoundly ignorant of the English constitution and of 
her own position. She knew that her marriage vow bound her 
to obey her husband ; and it had never occurred to her that 
the relation in which they stood to each other might one day 
be inverted. She had been nine years married before she dis- 
covered the cause of William's discontent ; nor would she ever 
have learned it from himself. In general his temper inclined 
him rather to brood over his griefs than to give utterance to 
them ; and in this particular case his lips were sealed by a 
very natural delicacy. At length a complete explanation and 
reconciliation were brought about by the agency of Gilbert 
Burnet. . . . 

All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the 
peacemaker between William and Mary. When persons who 
ought to esteem and love each other are kept asunder, as often 
happens, by some cause which three words of frank explana- 
tion would remove, they are fortunate if they possess an indis- 
creet friend who blurts out the whole truth. Burnet plainly 
told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon her 
husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small 
astonishment, that, when she became Queen of England, 
William would not share her throne. She warmly declared 
that there was no proof of conjugal submission and affection 
which she was not ready to give. Burnet, with many apologies 
and with solemn protestations that no human being had put 
words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy was in 
her own hands. She might easily, when the crown devolved 
on her, induce her Parliament not only to give the regal title 
to her husband, but even to transfer to him by a legislative 
act the administration of the government. " But," he added, 
" your Royal Highness ought 10 consider well before you 



366 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

announce any such resolution. For it is a resolution which, 
having once been announced, cannot safely or easily be 
retracted," " I want no time for consideration," answered 
Mary. ''It is enough that I have an opportunity of showing 
my regard for the Prince. Tell him what I say ; and bring 
him to me that he may hear it from my own lips." Burnet 
went in quest of William ; but William was many miles off 
after a stag. It was not till the next day that the decisive 
interview took place. " I did not know till yesterday," said 
Mary, "that there was such a difference between the laws of 
England and the laws of God. But I now promise you that 
you shall always bear rule ; and, in return, I ask only this, that, 
as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey 
their husbands, you will observe that which enjoins husbands 
to love their wives." Her generous affection completely gained 
the heart of William. From that time till the sad day when 
he was carried away in fits from her dying bed, there was 
entire friendship and confidence between them. Many of her 
letters to him are extant ; and they contain abundant evidence 
that this man, unamiable as he was in the eyes of the multi- 
tude, had succeeded in inspiring a beautiful and virtuous 
woman, born his superior, with a passion fond even to idolatry. 

(b) Invitation to William 

The Whigs saw that their time was come. Whether they 
should draw the sword against the government had, during six or 
seven years, been, in their view, merely a question of prudence ; 
and prudence itself now urged them to take a bold course. 

In May, before the birth of the Prince of Wales, and while 
it was still uncertain whether the Declaration would or would 
not be read in the churches, Edward Russell had repaired to 
the Hague. He had strongly represented to the Prince of 
Orange the state of the public mind, and had advised his 
Highness to appear in England at the head of a strong body 
of troops, and to call the people to arms. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 367 

William had seen, at a glance, the whole importance of the 
crisis. " Now or never," he exclaimed in Latin to Van Dykvelt.^ 
To Russell he held more guarded language, admitted that the 
distempers of the state were such as required an extraordinary 
remedy, but spoke with earnestness of the chance of failure, 
and of the calamities which failure might bring on Britain and 
on Europe. He knew well that many who talked in high lan- 
guage about sacrificing their lives and fortunes for their country 
would hesitate when the prospect of another Bloody Circuit 
was brought close to them. He wanted therefore to have, not 
vague professions of good will, but distinct invitations and 
promises of support subscribed by powerful and eminent 
men. Russell remarked that it would be dangerous to entrust 
the design to a great number of persons. William assented, 
and said that a few signatures would be sufficient, if they were 
the signatures of statesmen who represented great interests.^ 

With this answer Russell returned to London, where he 
found the excitement greatly increased and daily increasing. 
The imprisonment of the Bishops and the delivery of the 
Queen made his task easier than he could have anticipated. 
He lost no time in collecting the voices of the chiefs of the 
opposition. His principal coadjutor in this work was Henry 
Sidney, brother of Algernon. It is remarkable that both 
Edward Russell and Henry Sidney had been in the household 
of James, that both had, partly on public and partly on private 
grounds, become his enemies, and that both had to avenge 
the blood of near kinsmen who had, in the same year, fallen 
victims to his implacable severity. Here the resemblance ends. 
Russell, with considerable abilities, was proud, acrimonious, 
restless, and violent. Sidney, with a sweet temper and win- 
ning manners, seemed to be deficient in capacity and knowl- 
edge, and to be sunk in voluptuousness and indolence. His 
face and form were eminently handsome. In his youth he 
had been the terror of husbands ; and even now, at near fifty, 

^ "Aut nunc, aut nunquam." — Witsen MS. quoted by Wagenaar, book ix. 
" Burnet, i. 763. 



368 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

he was the favourite of women and the envy of younger men. 
He had formerly resided at the Hague in a pubUc character, 
and had then succeeded in obtaining a large share of William's 
confidence. Many wondered at this : for it seemed that be- 
tween the most austere of statesmen and the most dissolute of 
idlers there could be nothing in common. Swift, many years 
later, could not be convinced that one whom he had known 
only as an illiterate and frivolous old rake could really have 
played a great part in a great revolution. Yet a less acute ob- 
server than Swift might have been aware that there is a certain 
tact, resembling an instinct, which is often wanting to great 
orators and philosophers, and which is often found in persons 
who, if judged by their conversation or by their writings, would 
be pronounced simpletons. Indeed, when a man possesses this 
tact, it is in some sense an advantage to him that he is des- 
titute of those more showy talents which would make him an 
object of admiration, of envy, and of fear. Sidney was a 
remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable, ignorant, and dis- 
sipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with 
whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might 
safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that 
he did what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or 
Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent elocu- 
tion, never could have done.^ 

With the old Whigs there could be no difficulty. In their 
opinion there had been scarcely a moment, during many years, 
at which the public wrongs would not have justified resistance. 
Devonshire, who might be regarded as their chief, had private 
as well as public wrongs to revenge. He went into the scheme 
with his whole heart, and answered for his party .^ 

Russell opened the design to Shrewsbury. Sidney sounded 
Halifax. Shrewsbury took his part with a courage and decision 

1 Sidney's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Mr. Blencowe ; Mackay's 
Memoirs with Swift's note ; Burnet, i. 763. 

^Burnet, i. 764; Letter in cipher to WilHam, dated June iS. 168S, in 
Dalrymple. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 369 

which, at a later period, seemed to be wanting to his character. 
He at once agreed to set his estate, his honours, and his Hfe 
on the stake. But Hahfax received the first hint of the project 
in a way which showed that it would be useless, and perhaps 
hazardous, to be explicit. He was indeed not the man for such 
an enterprise. His intellect was inexhaustibly fertile of distinc- 
tions and objections ; his temper calm and unad venturous. He 
was ready to oppose the court to the utmost in the House of 
Lords and by means of anonymous writings : but he was little 
disposed to exchange his lordly repose for the insecure and 
agitated life of a conspirator, to be in the power of accom- 
plices, to live in constant dread of warrants and King's mes- 
sengers, nay, perhaps to end his days on a scaffold, or to live 
on alms in some back street of the Hague. He therefore let 
fall some words which plainly indicated that he did not wish 
to be privy to the intentions of his more daring and impetuous 
friends. Sidney understood him and said no more.^ 

The next application was made to Danby, and had far better 
success. Indeed, for his bold and active spirit the danger and 
the excitement, which were insupportable to the more delicately 
organized mind of Halifax, had a strong fascination. The 
different characters of the two statesmen were legible in their 
faces. The brow, the eye, and the mouth of Halifax indicated 
a powerful intellect and an exquisite sense of the ludicrous ; 
but the expression was that of a sceptic, of a voluptuary, of a 
man not likely to venture his all on a single hazard, or to be 
a martyr in any cause. To those who are acquainted with his 
countenance it will not seem wonderful that the writer in whom 
he most delighted was Montaigne.^ Danby was a skeleton ; 
and his meagre and wrinkled, though handsome and noble, 
face strongly expressed both the keenness of his parts and the 
restlessness of his ambition. Already he had once risen from 

1 Burnet, i. 764; Letter in cipher to William, dated June 18, 16SS. 

^ As to Montaigne, see Halifax's Letter to Cotton. I am not sure that the 
head of Halifax in Westminster Abbey does not give a more lively notion of 
him than any painting or engraving that I have seen. 



3;o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

obscurity to the height of power. He had then fallen head- 
long from his elevation. His life had been in danger. He 
had passed years in a prison. He was now free : but this did 
not content him ; he wished to be again great. Attached as 
he was to the Anglican Church, hostile as he was to the 
PVencli ascendency, he could not hope to be great in a court 
swarming with Jesuits and obsequious to the House of Bourbon. 
But, if he bore a chief part in a revolution which should con- 
found all the schemes of the Papists, which should put an end 
to the long vassalage of England, and which should transfer 
the regal power to an illustrious pair whom he had united, 
he might emerge from his eclipse with new splendour. The 
Whigs, whose animosity had nine years before driven him 
from office, would, on his auspicious reappearance, join their 
acclamations to the acclamations of his old friends the 
Cavaliers. Already there had been a complete reconciliation 
between him and one of the most distinguished of those who 
had formerly been managers of his impeachment, the Earl of 
Devonshire. The two noblemen had met at a village in the 
Peak, and had exchanged assurances of good will. Devonshire 
had frankly owned that the Whigs had been guilty of a great 
injustice, and had declared that they were now convinced of 
their error. Danby, on his side, had also recantations to make. 
He had once held, or pretended to hold, the doctrine of pas- 
sive obedience in the largest sense. Under his administration 
and with his sanction, a law had been proposed which, if it 
had been passed, would have excluded from Parliament and 
office all who refused to declare on oath that they thought 
resistance in every case unlawful. But his vigorous under- 
standing, now thoroughly awakened by anxiety for the public 
interests and for his own, was no longer to be duped, if indeed 
it ever had been duped, by such childish fallacies. He at once 
gave in his own adhesion to the conspiracy. He then exerted 
himself to obtain the concurrence of Compton, the suspended 
Bishop of London, and succeeded without difficulty. No prelate 
had been so insolently and unjustly treated by the government 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 371 

as Compton ; nor had any prelate so much to expect from a 
revolution : for he had directed the education of the Princess 
of Orange, and was supposed to possess a large share of her 
confidence. He had, like his brethren, strongly maintained, 
as long as he was not oppressed, that it was a crime to resist 
oppression ; but, since he had stood before the High Com- 
mission, a new light had broken in upon his mind.^ 

Both Danby and Compton were desirous to secure the assist- 
ance of Nottingham. The whole plan was opened to him ; and 
he approved of it. But in a few days he began to be unquiet. 
His mind was not sufficiently powerful to emancipate itself 
from the prejudices of education. He went about from divine 
to divine proposing in general terms hypothetical cases of 
tyranny and inquiring whether in such cases resistance would 
be lawful. The answers which he obtained increased his 
distress. He at length told his accomplices that he could go 
no further with them. If they thought him capable of betray- 
ing them, they might stab him ; and he should hardly blame 
them ; for, by drawing back after going so far, he had given 
them a kind of right over his life. They had, however, he 
assured them, nothing to fear from him : he would keep their 
secret ; he could not help wishing them success ; but his con- 
science would not suffer him to take an active part in a rebel- 
lion. They heard his confession with suspicion and disdain. 
Sidney, whose notions of a conscientious scruple were ex- 
tremely vague, informed the Prince that Nottingham had taken 
fright. It is due to Nottingham, however, to say that the 
general tenor of his life justifies us in believing his conduct 
on this occasion to have been perfectly honest, though most 
unwise and irresolute .^ 

The agents of the Prince had more complete success with 
Lord Lumley, who knew himself to be, in spite of the eminent 

^ See Danby's Introduction to the papers which he published in 1710; 
Burnet, i. 764. 

2 Burnet, i. 764; Sidney to the Prince of Orange, June 30. 1688, in 
Dalrymple. 



372 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

service which he had performed at the time of the Western 
insurrection, abhorred at Whitehall, not only as a heretic but 
as a renegade, and who was therefore more eager than most 
of those who had been born Protestants to take arms in 
defence of Protestantism. ^ 

During June the meetings of those who were in the secret 
were frequent. At length, on the last day of the month, the 
day on which the Bishops were pronounced not guilty, the 
decisive step was taken. A formal invitation, transcribed by 
Sidney, but drawn up by some person more skilled than Sidney 
in the art of composition, was despatched to the Hague. In 
this paper William was assured that nineteen-twentieths of the 
English people were desirous of a change, and would willingly 
join to effect it, if only they could obtain the help of such a 
force from abroad as might secure those who should rise in 
arms from the danger of being dispersed and slaughtered 
before they could form themselves into anything like military 
order. If his Highness would appear in the island at the head 
of some troops, tens of thousands would hasten to his standard. 
He would soon find himself at the head of a force greatly 
superior to the whole regular army of England. Nor could 
that army be implicitly depended on by the government. The 
officers were discontented ; and the common soldiers shared 
that aversion to Popery which was general in the class from 
which they were taken. In the navy Protestant feeling was 
still stronger. It was important to take some decisive step 
while things were in this state. The enterprise would be far 
more arduous if it were deferred till the King, by remodelling 
boroughs and regiments, had procured a Parliament and an 
army on which he could rely. The conspirators, therefore, 
implored the Prince to come among them with as little delay 
as possible. They pledged their honour that they would join 
him ; and they undertook to secure the co-operation of as large 
a number of persons as could safely be trusted with so mo- 
mentous and perilous a secret. On one point they thought it 
1 Burnet, i. 763; Lumley to William, May 31. 1688, in Dalrymple. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 373 

their duty to remonstrate with his Highness. He had not 
taken advantage of the opinion which the great body of the 
English people had formed respecting the late birth. He had, 
on the contrary, sent congratulations to Whitehall, and had 
thus seemed to acknowledge that the child who was called 
Prince of Wales was rightful heir of the throne. This was a 
grave error, and had damped the zeal of many. Not one person 
in a thousand doubted that the boy was supposititious ; and the 
Prince would be wanting to his own interests if the suspicious 
circumstances which had attended the Queen's confinement were 
not put prominently forward among his reasons for taking arms.^ 

This paper was signed in cipher by the seven chiefs of the 
conspiracy — Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, Compton, 
Russell, and Sidney. Herbert undertook to be their messenger. 
His errand was one of no ordinary peril. He assumed the garb 
of a common sailor, and in this disguise reached the Dutch 
coast in safety, on the Friday after the trial of the Bishops. 
He instantly hastened to the Prince. Bentinck and Van Dykvelt 
were summoned, and several days were passed in deliberation. 
The first result of this deliberation was that the prayer for the 
Prince of Wales ceased to be read in the Princess's chapel.^ 

From his wife William had no opposition to apprehend. 
Her understanding had been completely subjugated by his ; and, 
what is more extraordinary, he had won her entire affection. 
He was to her in the place of the parents whom she had lost 
by death and by estrangement, of the children who had been 
denied to her prayers, and of the country from which she was 
banished. His empire over her heart was divided only with 
her God, To her father she had probably never been attached : 
she had quitted him young : many years had elapsed since 
she had seen him ; and no part of his conduct to her, since 
her marriage, had indicated tenderness on his part, or had been 
calculated to call forth tenderness on hers. He had done all 
in his power to disturb her domestic happiness, and had 

^ See the invitation at length in Dalrymple. 

2 Sidney's Letter to WiUiam, June 30. 1688 ; Avaux Neg., July |g. ||. 



374 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

established a system of spying, eavesdropping, and tale-bearing 
under her roof. He had a far greater revenue than any of his 
predecessors had ever possessed, and allowed to her younger 
sister thirty or forty thousand pounds a year : ^ but the heiress 
presumptive of his throne had never received from him the 
smallest pecuniary assistance, and was scarcely able to make 
that appearance which became her high rank among European 
princesses. She had ventured to intercede with him on behalf 
of her old friend and preceptor Compton, who, for refusing to 
commit an act of flagitious injustice, had been suspended from 
his episcopal functions ; but she had been ungraciously re- 
pulsed.2 From the day on which it had become clear that 
she and her husband were determined not to be parties to 
the subversion of the English constitution, one chief object of 
the politics of James had been to injure them both. He had 
recalled the British regiments from Holland. He had con- 
spired with Tyrconnel and with France against Mary's rights, 
and had made arrangements for depriving her of one at least 
of the three crowns to which, at his death, she would have 
been entitled. It was now believed by the great body of his 
people, and by many persons high in rank and distinguished 
by abilities, that he had introduced a supposititious Prince of 
Wales into the royal family in order to deprive her of a 
magnificent inheritance ; and there is no reason to doubt that 
she partook of the prevailing suspicion. That she should love 
such a father was impossible. Her religious principles, indeed, 
were so strict that she would probably have tried to perform 
what she considered as her duty, even to a father whom she 
did not love. On the present occasion, however, she judged 
that the claim of James to her obedience ought to yield to a 
claim more sacred. And indeed all divines and publicists 
agree in this, that, when the daughter of a prince of one country 
is married to a prince of another country, she is bound to 
forget her own people and her father's house, and, in the event 
of a rupture between her husband and her parents, to side 

1 Bonrepaux, July ^|. 1687. ^ Birch's Extracts, in the British Museum. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 375 

with her husband. This is the undoubted rule even when the 
husband is in the wrong ; and to Mary the enterprise which 
Wilham meditated appeared not only just, but holy. 

But, though she carefully abstained from doing or saying 
anything that could add to his difficulties, those difficulties 
were serious indeed. They were in truth but imperfectly 
understood even by some of those who invited him over, and 
have been but imperfectly described by some of those who 
have written the history of his expedition. 

The obstacles which he might expect to encounter on Eng- 
lish ground, though the least formidable of the obstacles which 
stood in the way of his design, were yet serious. He felt that 
it would be madness in him to imitate the example of Mon- 
mouth, to cross the sea with a few British adventurers, and to 
trust to a general rising of the population. It was necessary, 
and it was pronounced necessary by all those who invited him 
over, that he should carry an army with him. Yet who could 
answer for the effect which the appearance of such an army 
might produce .? The government was indeed justly odious. 
But would the English people, altogether unaccustomed to the 
interference of continental powers in English disputes, be in- 
clined to look with favour on a deliverer who was surrounded 
by foreign soldiers ? If any part of the royal forces resolutely 
withstood the invaders, would not that part soon have on its 
side the patriotic sympathy of millions ? A defeat would be 
fatal to the whole undertaking. A bloody victory gained in the 
heart of the island by the mercenaries of the States General 
over the Coldstream Guards and the Buffs would be almost as 
great a calamity as a defeat. Such a victory would be the 
most cruel wound ever inflicted on the national pride of one 
of the proudest of nations. The crown so won would never 
be worn in peace or security. The hatred with which the 
High Commission and the Jesuits were regarded would give 
place to the more intense hatred which would be inspired by the 
alien conquerors ; and many, who had hitherto contemplated 
t;he power of France with dread and loathing, would say that, 



376 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

if a foreign yoke must be borne, there was less ignominy 
in submitting to France than in submitting to Holland. 

These considerations might well have made William uneasy, 
even if all the military means of the United Provinces had 
been at his absolute disposal. But in truth it seemed very 
doubtful whether he would he able to obtain the assistance of 
a single battalion. Of all the difficulties with which he had to 
struggle, the greatest, though little noticed by English histo- 
rians, arose from the constitution of the Batavian republic. No 
great society has ever existed during a long course of years 
under a polity so inconvenient. The States General could not 
make war or peace, could not conclude any alliance or levy 
any tax, without the consent of the States of every province. 
The States of a province could not give such consent without 
the consent of every municipality which had a share in the 
representation. Every municipality was, in some sense, a sover- 
eign state, and, as such, claimed the right of communicating 
directly with foreign ambassadors, and of concerting with them 
the means of defeating schemes on which other municipalities 
were intent. In some town councils the party which had, 
during several generations, regarded the influence of the Stadt- 
holders with jealousy had great power. At the head of this 
party were the magistrates of the noble city of Amsterdam, 
which was then at the height of prosperity. They had, ever 
since the peace of Nimeguen, kept up a friendly correspond- 
ence with Louis through the instrumentality of his able and 
active envoy the Count of Avaux. Propositions brought for- 
ward by the Stadtholder as indispensable to the security of 
the commonwealth, sanctioned by all the provinces except 
Holland, and sanctioned by seventeen of the eighteen town 
councils of Holland, had repeatedly been negatived by the 
single voice of Amsterdam. The only constitutional remedy 
in such cases was that deputies from the cities which were 
agreed should pay a visit to the city which dissented, for 
the purpose of expostulation. The number of deputies was 
unlimited : they might continue to expostulate as long as they 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 377 

thought fit ; and meanwhile all their expenses were defrayed by 
the obstinate community which refused to yield to their argu- 
ments. This absurd mode of coercion had once been tried 
with success on the little town of Gorkum, but was not likely 
to produce much effect on the mighty and opulent Amsterdam, 
renowned throughout the world for its haven bristling with in- 
numerable masts, its canals bordered by stately mansions, its 
gorgeous hall of state, walled, roofed, and floored with polished 
marble, its warehouses filled with the most costly productions of 
Ceylon and Surinam, and its Exchange resounding with the 
endless hubbub of all the languages spoken by civilized men.^ 
The disputes between the majority which supported the 
Stadtholder and the minority headed by the magistrates of 
Amsterdam had repeatedly run so high that bloodshed had 
seemed to be inevitable. On one occasion the Prince had 
attempted to bring the refractory deputies to punishment as 
traitors. On another occasion the gates of Amsterdam had 
been barred against him, and troops had been raised to defend 
the privileges of the municipal council. That the rulers of 
this great city would ever consent to an expedition offensive in 
the highest degree to Louis whom they courted, and likely to 
aggrandize the House of Orange which they abhorred, was not 
likely. Yet, without their consent, such an expedition could 
not legally be undertaken. To quell their opposition by main 
force was a course from which, in different circumstances, the 
resolute and daring Stadtholder would not have shrunk. But 
at that moment it was most important that he should carefully 
avoid every act which could be represented as tyrannical. He 
could not venture to violate the fundamental laws of Holland 
at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against 
his father-in-law for violating the fundamental laws of England. 
The violent subversion of one free constitution would have 
been a strange prelude to the violent restoration of another.^ 

1 Avaux Neg., ^^ 16S3. 

2 As to the relation in which the Stadtholder and the city of Amsterdam 
stood towards each other, see Avaux, J>assim. 



3/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

There was yet another difficulty which has been too httle 
noticed by EngHsh writers, but which was never for a moment 
absent from Wilham's mind. In the expedition which he 
meditated he could succeed only by appealing to the Protestant 
feeling of England, and by stimulating that feeling till it 
became, for a time, the dominant and almost the exclusive 
sentiment of the nation. This would indeed have been a very 
simple course, had the end of all his politics been to effect a 
revolution in our island and to reign there. But he had in 
view an ulterior end which could be obtained only by the help 
of princes sincerely attached to the Church of Rome. He was 
desirous to unite the Empire, the Catholic King, and the 
Holy See, with England and Holland, in a league against the 
French ascendency. It was therefore necessary that, while 
striking the greatest blow ever struck in defence of Protestant- 
ism, he should yet contrive not to lose the good will of govern- 
ments which regarded Protestantism as a deadly heresy. 

Such were the complicated difficulties of this great under- 
taking. Continental statesmen saw a part of those difficulties; 
British statesmen another part. One capacious and powerful 
mind alone took them all in at one view, and determined to 
surmount them all. It was no easy thing to subvert the English 
government by means of a foreign army without galling the 
national pride of Englishmen. It was no easy thing to obtain 
from that Batavian faction which regarded France with par- 
tiality, and the House of Orange with aversion, a decision in 
favour of an expedition which would confound all the schemes 
of France, and raise the House of Orange to the height of 
greatness. It was no easy thing to lead enthusiastic Protestants 
on a crusade against Popery with the good wishes of almost 
all Popish governments and of the Pope himself. Yet all these 
things William effected. All his objects, even those which 
appeared most incompatible with each other, he attained com- 
pletely and at once. The whole history of ancient and of 
modern times records no other such triumph of statesmanship. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 379 

(<?) Revolution of 1688 

In order that the questions which had been in dispute 
between the Stuarts and the nation might never again be 
stirred, it was determined that the instrument by which the 
Prince and Princess of Orange were called to the throne, 
and by which the order of succession was settled, should set 
forth, in the most distinct and solemn manner, the funda- 
mental principles of the constitution. This instrument, known 
by the name of the Declaration of Right, was prepared by a 
committee, of which Somers was chairman. The fact that the 
low-born young barrister was appointed to so honourable and 
important a post in a Parliament filled with able and expe- 
rienced men, only ten days after he had spoken in the House 
of Commons for the first time, sufficiently proves the superiority 
of his abilities. In a few hours the Declaration was framed 
and approved by the Commons. The Lords assented to it with 
some amendments of no great importance.^ 

The Declaration began by recapitulating the crimes and 
errors which had made a revolution necessary. James had 
invaded the province of the legislature ; had treated modest 
petitioning as a crime ; had oppressed the Church by means 
of an illegal tribunal ; had, without the consent of Parliament, 
levied taxes and maintained a standing army in time of peace ; 
had violated the freedom of election, and perverted the course 
of justice. Proceedings which could lawfully be questioned 
only in Parliament had been made the subjects of prosecution 
in the King's Bench. Partial and corrupt juries had been- 
returned : excessive bail had been required from prisoners : 
excessive fines had been imposed : barbarous and unusual 
punishments had been inflicted : the estates of accused persons 
had been granted away before conviction. He, by whose 
authority these things had been done, had abdicated the 
government. The Prince of Orange, whom God had made 

1 Commons' Journals, Feb. 4. 8. Ii. 12; Lords' Journals, Feb. 9. 11. 
12. i68|. 



38o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the glorious instrument of delivering the nation from super- 
stition and tyranny, had invited the Estates of the Realm to 
meet and to take counsel together for the securing of religion, 
of law, and of freedom. The Lords and Commons, having 
deliberated, had resolved that they would first, after the 
example of their ancestors, assert the ancient rights and liberties 
of England. Therefore it was declared that the dispensing 
power, as lately assumed and exercised, had no legal existence ; 
that, without grant of Parliament, no money could be ex- 
acted by the sovereign from the subject; that, without consent 
of Parliament, no standing army could be kept up in time of 
peace. The right of subjects to petition, the right of electors 
to choose representatives freely, the right of the legislature to 
freedom of debate, the right of the nation to a pure and mer- 
ciful administration of justice according to the spirit of our 
mild laws, were solemnly affirmed. All these things the Con- 
vention claimed, in the name of the whole nation, as the 
undoubted inheritance of Englishmen. Having thus vindicated 
the principles of the constitution, the Lords and Commons, in 
the entire confidence that the deliverer would hold sacred the 
laws and liberties which he had saved, resolved that William 
and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, should be declared 
King and Queen of England for their joint and separate lives, 
and that, during their joint lives, the administration of the 
government should be in the Prince alone. After them the 
crown was settled on the posterity of Mary, then on Anne 
and her posterity, and then on the posterity of William. 

By this time the wind had ceased to blow from the west. 
The ship in which the Princess of Orange had embarked lay 
off Margate on the eleventh of February, and, on the following 
morning, anchored at Greenwich.^ She was received with many 
signs of joy and affection : but her demeanour shocked the 
Tories, and was not thought faultless even by the Whigs. A 
young woman, placed, by a destiny as mournful and awful as 
that which brooded over the fabled houses of Labdacus and 

1 London Gazette, Feb. 14. i68|; Van Citters, Feb. U. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 381 

Pelops, in such a situation that she could not, without violating 
her duty to her God, her husband, and her country, refuse to 
take her seat on the throne from which her father had just been 
hurled, should have been sad, or at least serious. Mary was 
not merely in high, but in extravagant, spirits. She entered 
Whitehall, it was asserted, with a girlish delight at being 
mistress of so fine a house, ran about the rooms, peeped into 
the closets, and examined the quilt of the state bed, without 
seeming to remember by whom those magnificent apartments 
had last been occupied. Burnet, who had, till then, thought 
her an angel in human form, could not, on this occasion, 
refrain from blaming her. He was the more astonished 
because, when he took leave of her at the Hague, she had, 
though fully convinced that she was in the path of duty, been 
deeply dejected. To him, as to her spiritual guide, she after- 
wards explained her conduct. William had written to inform 
her that some of those who had tried to separate her interest 
from his still continued their machinations : they gave it out 
that she thought herself wronged ; and, if she wore a gloomy 
countenance, the report would be confirmed. He therefore 
intreated her to make her first appearance with an air of 
cheerfulness. Her heart, she said, was far indeed from cheer- 
ful ; but she had done her best ; and, as she was afraid of not 
sustaining well a part which was uncongenial to her feelings, 
she had overacted it. Her deportment was the subject of much 
spiteful prose and verse : it lowered her in the opinion of 
some whose esteem she valued ; nor did the world know, till 
she was beyond the reach of praise and censure, that the con- 
duct which had brought on her the reproach of levity and 
insensibility was really a signal instance of that perfect disinter- 
estedness and self-devotion of which man seems to be incapable, 
but which is sometimes found in woman. ^ 

On the morning of Wednesday, the thirteenth of February, 
the court of Whitehall and all the neighbouring streets were 

1 Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication ; Review of the Vindication ; 
Burnet, i. 781. 825. and Dartmouth's note ; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 21. i68|. 



382 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

filled with gazers. The magnificent Banqueting House, the 
masterpiece of Inigo, embellished by masterpieces of Rubens, 
had been prepared for a great ceremony. The walls were 
lined by the yeomen of the guard. Near the northern door, on 
the right hand, a large number of Peers had assembled. On 
the left were the Commons with their Speaker, attended by the 
mace. The southern door opened : and the Prince and Princess 
of Orange, side by side, entered, and took their place under 
the canopy of state. 

Both Houses approached, bowing low. William and Mary 
advanced a few steps. Halifax on the right, and Powle on the 
left, stood forth ; and Halifax spoke. The Convention, he said, 
had agreed to a resolution which he prayed Their Highnesses 
to hear. They signified their assent ; and the clerk of the 
House of Lords read, in a loud voice, the Declaration of 
Right. When he had concluded, Halifax, in the name of all 
the Estates of the Realm, requested the Prince and Princess 
to accept the crown. 

William, in his own name and in that of his wife, answered 
that the crown was, in their estimation, the more valuable 
because it was presented to them as a token of the confidence 
of the nation. "We thankfully accept," he said, "what you 
have offered us." Then, for himself, he assured them that the 
laws of England, which he had once already vindicated, should 
be the rules of his conduct, that it should be his study to 
promote the welfare of the kingdom, and that, as to the means 
of doing so, he should constantly recur to the advice of the 
Houses, and should be disposed to trust their judgment 
rather than his own.^ These words were received with a shout of 
joy which was heard in the streets below, and was instantly an- 
swered by huzzas from many thousands of voices. The Lords 
and Commons then reverently retired" from the Banqueting 

1 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Feb. 14. i68fy ; Van Citters, Feb. ^f. 
Van Citters puts into William's mouth stronger expressions of respect for 
the authority of Parliament than appear in the Journals ; but it is clear from 
what Powle said that the report in the Journals was not strictly accurate. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 383 

House and went in procession to the great gate of White- 
hall, where the heralds and pursuivants were waiting in their 
gorgeous tabards. All the space as far as Charing Cross was 
one sea of heads. The kettledrums struck up ; the trumpets 
pealed : and Garter King at Arms, in a loud voice, proclaimed 
the Prince and Princess of Orange King and Queen of 
England, charged- all Englishmen to bear, from that moment, 
faith and true allegiance to the new sovereigns, and besought 
God, who had already wrought so signal a deliverance for our 
Church and nation, to bless William and Mary with a long 
and happy reign. ^ 

Thus was consummated the English Revolution. When we 
compare it with those revolutions which have, during the last 
sixty years, overthrown so many ancient governments, we 
cannot but be struck by its peculiar character. Why that 
character was so peculiar is sufficiently obvious, and yet seems 
not to have been always understood either by eulogists or 
by censors. 

The continental revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries took place in countries where all trace of the limited 
monarchy of the middle ages had long been effaced. The 
right of the prince to make laws and to levy money had, 
during many generations, been undisputed. His throne was 
guarded by a great regular army. His administration could 
not, without extreme peril, be blamed even in the mildest 
terms. His subjects held their personal liberty by no other 
tenure than his pleasure. Not a single institution was left 
which had, within the memory of the oldest man, afforded 
efficient protection to the subject against the utmost excess of 
tyranny. Those great councils which had once curbed the 
regal power had sunk into oblivion. Their composition and 
their privileges were known only to antiquaries. We cannot 
wonder, therefore, that, when men who had been thus ruled 
succeeded in wresting supreme power from a government which 

1 London Gazette, Feb. 14. i68|; Lords' and Commons' Journals, Feb. 13; 
Van Citters, Feb. ^f ; Evelyn, Feb. 21. 



384 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

they had long in secret hated, they should have been impatient 
to demolish and unable to construct, that they should have 
been fascinated by every specious novelty, that they should 
have proscribed every title, ceremony, and phrase associated 
with the old system, and that, turning away with disgust from 
their own national precedents and traditions, they should have 
sought for principles of government in the writings of theorists, 
or aped, with ignorant and ungraceful affectation, the patriots 
of Athens and Rome. As little can we wonder that the violent 
action of the revolutionary spirit should have been followed by 
reaction equally violent, and that confusion should speedily 
have engendered despotism sterner than that from which it 
had sprung. 

Had we been in the same situation ; had Strafford succeeded 
in his favourite scheme *of Thorough ; had he formed an army 
as numerous and as well disciplined as that which, a few years 
later, was formed by Cromwell ; had a series of judicial deci- 
sions, similar to that which was pronounced by the Exchequer 
Chamber in the case of shipmoney, transferred to the crown 
the right of taxing the people ; had the Star Chamber and 
the High Commission continued to fine, mutilate, and imprison 
every man who dared to raise his voice against the govern- 
ment ; had the press been as completely enslaved here as at 
Vienna or at Naples ; had our Kings gradually drawn to them- 
selves the whole legislative power ; had six generations of 
Englishmen passed away without a single session of Parlia- 
ment ; and had we then at length risen up in some moment 
of wild excitement against our masters, what an outbreak 
would that have been ! With what a crash, heard and felt to 
the farthest ends of the world, would the whole vast fabric of 
society have fallen ! How many thousands of exiles, once the 
most prosperous and the most refined members of this great 
community, would have begged their bread in continental 
cities, or have sheltered their heads under huts of bark in the 
uncleared forests of America ! How often should we have seen 
the pavement of London piled up in barricades, the houses 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 385 

dinted with bullets, the gutters foaming with blood ! How 
many times should we have rushed wildly from extreme to 
extreme, sought refuge from anarchy in despotism, and been 
again driven by despotism into anarchy ! How many years of 
blood and confusion would it have cost us to learn the very 
rudiments of political science ! How many childish theories 
would have duped us ! How many rude and ill-poised con- 
stitutions should we have set up, only to see them tumble 
down ! Happy would it have been for us if a sharp discipline 
of half a century had sufficed to educate us into a capacity of 
enjoying true freedom. 

These calamities our Revolution averted. It was a revolution 
strictly defensive, and had prescription and legitimacy on its 
side. Here, and here only, a limited monarchy of the thir- 
teenth century had come down unimpaired to the seventeenth 
century. Our parliamentary institutions were in full vigour. 
The main principles of our government were excellent. They 
were not, indeed, formally and exactly set forth in a single 
written instrument ; but they were to be found scattered over 
our ancient and noble statutes ; and, what was of far greater 
moment, they had been engraven on the hearts of Englishmen 
during four hundred years. That, without the consent of the 
representatives of the nation, no legislative act could be passed, 
no tax imposed, no regular soldiery kept up ; that no man could 
be imprisoned, even for a day, by the arbitrary will of the sov- 
ereign ; that no tool of power could plead the royal command 
as a justification for violating any right of the humblest subject, 
were held, both by Whigs and Tories, to be fundamental laws 
of the realm. A realm of which these were the fundamental 
laws stood in no need of a new constitution. 

But, though a new constitution was not needed, it was plain 
that changes were required. The misgovernmicnt of the Stuarts, 
and the troubles which that misgovernment had produced, suffi- 
ciently proved that there was somewhere a defect in our polity ; 
and that defect it was the duty of the Convention to discover 
and to supply. 



386 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Some questions of great moment were still open to dispute. 
Our constitution had begun to exist in times when statesmen 
were not much accustomed to frame exact definitions. Anom- 
alies, therefore, inconsistent with its principles and dangerous 
to its very existence, had sprung up almost imperceptibly, 
and not having, during many years, caused any serious incon- 
venience, had gradually acquired the force of prescription. 
The remedy for these evils was to assert the rights of the 
people in such language as should terminate all controversy, 
and to declare that no precedent could justify any violation of 
those rights. - 

When this had been done it would be impossible for our 
rulers to misunderstand the law : but, unless something more 
were done, it was by no means improbable that they might 
violate it. Unhappily the Church had long taught the nation 
that hereditary monarchy, alone among our institutions, was 
divine and inviolable ; that the right of the House of Commons 
to a share in the legislative power was a right merely human, 
but that the right of the King to the obedience of his people 
was from above ; that the Great Charter was a statute which 
might be repealed by those who had made it, but that the rule 
which called the princes of the blood royal to the throne in 
order of succession was of celestial origin, and that any Act 
of Parliament inconsistent with that rule was a nullity. It is 
evident that, in a society in which such superstitions prevail, 
constitutional freedom must ever be insecure, A power which 
is regarded merely as the ordinance of man cannot be an effi- 
cient check on a power which is regarded as the ordinance 
of God. It is vain to hope that laws, however excellent, will 
permanently restrain a King who, in his own opinion, and in 
the opinion of a great part of his people, has an authority 
infinitely higher in kind than the authority which belongs to 
those laws. To deprive royalty of these mysterious attributes, 
and to establish the principle that Kings reigned by a right 
in no respect differing from the right by which freeholders 
chose knights of the shire, or from the right by which Judges 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 387 

granted writs of Habeas Corpus, was absolutely necessary to 
the security of our liberties. 

Thus the Convention had two great duties to perform. The 
first was to clear the fundamental laws of the realm from ambi- 
guity. The second was to eradicate from the minds, both of 
the governors and of the governed, the false and pernicious 
notion that the royal prerogative was something more sublime 
and holy than those fundamental laws. The former object 
was attained by the solemn recital and claim with which the 
Declaration of Right commences ; the latter by the resolution 
which pronounced the throne vacant, and invited William and 
Mary to fill it. 

The change seems small. Not a single flower of the crown 
was touched. Not a single new right was given to the people. 
The whole English law, substantive and adjective, was, in the 
judgment of all the greatest lawyers, of Holt and Treby, of 
Maynard and Somers, almost exactly the same after the Revo- 
lution as before it. Some controverted points had been de- 
cided according to the sense of the best jurists ; and there had 
been a slight deviation from the ordinary course of succession. 
This was all ; and this was enough. 

As our Revolution was a vindication of ancient rights, so it 
was conducted with strict attention to ancient formalities. In 
almost every word and act may be discerned a profound rever- 
ence for the past. The Estates of the Realm deliberated in 
the old halls and according to the old rules. Powle was con- 
ducted to his chair between his mover and his seconder with 
the accustomed forms. The Serjeant with his mace brought 
up the messengers of the Lords to the table of the Commons ; 
and the three obeisances were duly made. The conference 
was held with all the antique ceremonial. On one side of the 
table, in the Painted Chamber, the" managers of the Lords sat 
covered and robed in ermine and gold. The managers of the 
Commons stood bareheaded on the other side. The speeches 
present an almost ludicrous contrast to the revolutionary oratory 
of every other country. Both the English parties agreed in 



388 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

treating with solemn respect the ancient constitutional tradi- 
tions of the state. The only question was, in what sense those 
traditions were to be understood. The assertors of liberty said 
not a word about the natural equality of men and the inalien- 
able sovereignty of the people, about Harmodius or Timoleon, 
Brutus the elder or Brutus the younger. When they were 
told that, by the English law, the crown, at the moment of a 
demise, must descend to the next heir, they answered that, by 
the English law, a living man could have no heir. When they 
were told that there was no precedent for declaring the throne 
vacant, they produced from among the records in the Tower 
a roll of parchment, near three hundred years old, on which, 
in quaint characters and barbarous Latin, it was recorded that 
the Estates of the Realm had declared vacant the throne of 
a perfidious and tyrannical Plantagenet. When at length the 
dispute had been accommodated, the new sovereigns were 
proclaimed with the old pageantry. All the fantastic pomp of 
heraldry was there — Clarencieux and Norroy, Portcullis and 
Rouge Dragon, the trumpets, the banners, the grotesque 
coats embroidered with lions and lilies. The title of King of 
France, assumed by the conqueror of Cressy, was not omitted 
in the royal style. To us, who have lived in the year 1848, it 
may seem almost an abuse of terms to call a proceeding con- 
ducted with so much deliberation, with so much sobriety, and 
with such minute attention to prescriptive etiquette, by the 
terrible name of Revolution. 

And yet this revolution, of all revolutions the least violent, 
has been of all revolutions the most beneficent. It finally 
decided the great question whether the popular element which 
had, ever since the age of Fitzwalter and De Montfort, been 
found in the English polity, should be destroyed by the monar- 
chical element, or should be suffered to develop itself freely, 
and to become dominant. The strife between the two prin- 
ciples had been long, fierce, and doubtful. It had lasted 
through four reigns. It had produced seditions, impeachments, 
rebellions, battles, sieges, proscriptions, judicial massacres. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 389 

Sometimes liberty, sometimes royalty, had seemed to be on the 
point of perishing. During many years one half of the energy 
of England had been employed in counteracting the other half. 
The executive power and the legislative power had so effec- 
tually impeded each other that the state had been of no account 
in Europe. The King at Arms, who proclaimed William and 
Mary before Whitehall Gate, did in truth announce that this 
great struggle was over ; that there was entire union between 
the throne and the Parliament ; that England, long dependent 
and degraded, was again a power of the first rank ; that the 
ancient laws by which the prerogative was bounded would thence- 
forth be held as sacred as the prerogative itself, and would be 
followed out to all their consequences ; that the executive ad- 
ministration would be conducted in conformity with the sense 
of the representatives of the nation ; and that no reform, which 
the two Houses should, after mature deliberation, propose, would 
be obstinately withstood by the sovereign. The Declaration of 
Right, though it made nothing law which had not been law 
before, contained the germ of the law which gave religious free- 
dom to the Dissenter, of the law which secured the independ- 
ence of the Judges, of the law which limited the duration of 
Parliaments, of the law which placed the liberty of the press 
under the protection of juries, of the law which prohibited 
the slave trade, of the law which abolished the sacramental 
test, of the law which relieved the Roman Catholics from civil 
disabilities, of the law which reformed the representative sys- 
tem, of every good law which has been passed during more 
than a century and a half, of every good law which may here- 
after, in the course of ages, be found necessary to promote the 
public weal, and to satisfy the demands of public opinion. 

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revo- 
lution of 1688 is this, that it was our last revolution. Several 
generations have now passed away since any wise and patriotic 
Englishman has meditated resistance to the established gov- 
ernment. In all honest and reflecting minds there is a con- 
viction, daily strengthened by experience, that the means of 



390 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

effecting every improvement which the constitution requires 
may be found within the constitution itself. 

Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole 
importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers 
against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is con- 
vulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments which 
lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden 
shaken and overthrown. The proudest capitals of Western 
Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions, the 
thirst of gain and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of 
class to class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose 
from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety 
have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts of millions. 
Trade has been suspended, and industry paralyzed. The rich 
have become poor ; and the poor have become poorer. Doc- 
trines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all 
domestic charities, doctrines which, if carried into effect, would, 
in thirty years, undo all that thirty centuries have done for 
mankind, and would make the fairest provinces of France and 
Germany as savage as Congo or Patagonia, have been avowed 
from the tribune and defended by the sword. Europe has 
been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, compared with 
whom the barbarians who marched under Attila and Alboin 
were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of the 
people have with deep sorrow owned that interests more pre- 
cious than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it 
might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save 
civilization. Meanwhile in our island the regular course of 
government has never been for a day interrupted. The few 
bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the 
courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal 
nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if 
it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer 
is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seek- 
ing to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in 
the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 391 

revolution in the nineteenth. It is because we have had free- 
dom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the 
midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of 
property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our 
homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls 
down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the 
Convention, and to William of Orange. 

[d) William and Mary in England 

Unhappily sarcasm and invective directed against William 
were but too likely to find favourable audience. Each of the 
two great parties had its own reasons for being dissatisfied with 
him ; and there were some complaints in which both parties 
joined. His manners gave almost universal offence. He was 
in truth far better qualified to save a nation than to adorn a 
court. In the highest parts of statesmanship, he had no equal 
among his contemporaries. He had formed plans not inferior 
in grandeur and boldness to those of Richelieu, and had carried 
them into effect with a tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin. 
Two countries, the seats of civil liberty and of the Reformed 
Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and courage from 
extreme perils. Holland he had delivered from foreign and 
England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparently insurmount- 
able had been interposed between him and the ends on which 
he was intent ; and those obstacles his genius had turned into 
stepping-stones. Under his dexterous management the hered- 
itary enemies of his house had helped him to mount a throne ; 
and the persecutors of his religion had helped him to rescue 
his religion from persecution. Fleets and armies, collected to 
withstand him, had, without a struggle, submitted to his orders. 
Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had recog- 
nized him as their common head. Without carnage, without 
devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all the 
victories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a 
few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states 



392 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

in Europe, and had restored the equihbrium which the pre- 
ponderance of one power had destroyed. Foreign nations did 
ample justice to his great qualities. In every Continental 
country where Protestant congregations met, fervent thanks 
were offered to God, who, from among the progeny of His 
servants, Maurice, the deliverer of Germany, and William, the 
deliverer of Holland, had raised up a third deliverer, the wisest 
and mightiest of all. At Vienna, at Madrid, nay at Rome, 
the valiant and sagacious heretic was held in honour as the 
chief of the great confederacy against the House of Bourbon; 
and even at Versailles the hatred which he inspired was largely 
mingled with admiration. 

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our ances- 
tors saw him in the worst of all lights. By the French, the 
Germans, and the Italians, he was contemplated at such a 
distance that only what was great could be discerned, and 
that small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch he was 
brought close : but he was himself a Dutchman. In his inter- 
course with them he was seen to the best advantage : he was 
perfectly at his ease with them ; and from among them he 
had chosen his earliest and dearest friends. But to the 
English he appeared in a most unfortunate point of view. 
He was at once too near to them and too far from them. 
He lived among them, so that the smallest peculiarity of 
temper or manner could not escape their notice. Yet he lived 
apart from them, and was to the last a foreigner in speech, 
tastes, and habits. 

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long been 
to preside over the society of the capital. That function Charles 
the Second had performed with immense success. His easy 
bow, his good stories, his style of dancing and playing tennis, 
the sound of his cordial laugh, were familiar to all London. 
One day he was seen among the elms of Saint James's Park 
chatting with Dryden about poetry.^ Another day his arm 

^ See the account given in Spence's Anecdotes of the Origin of Dryden's 
Medal. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 393 

was on Tom Durfey's shoulder ; and his Majesty was taking 
a second, while his companion sang " PhilHda, Phillida," or, 
" To horse, brave boys ! to Newmarket — to horse ! "^ James, 
with much less vivacity and good nature, was accessible, and, 
to people who did not cross him, civil. But of this sociable- 
ness William was entirely destitute. He seldom came forth 
from his closet ; and, when he appeared in the public rooms, 
he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies, stern and 
abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing 
look, his silence, the dry and concise answers which he uttered 
when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen 
and gentlemen who had been accustomed to be slapped on 
the back by their royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congrat- 
ulated about race cups or rallied about actresses. The women 
missed the homage due to their sex. They observed that the 
King spoke in a somewhat imperious tone even to the wife 
to whom he owed so much, and whom he sincerely loved and 
esteemed.^ They were amused and shocked to see him, when 
the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first green 
peas of the year were put on the table, devour the whole dish 
without offering a spoonful to Her Royal Highness ; and they 
pronounced that this great soldier and politician was no better 
than a Low Dutch bear.^ 

1 Guardian, No. 67. 

2 There is abundant proof that WilHam, though a very affectionate, was 
not always a polite husband. But no credit is due to the story contained in 
the letter which Dalrymple was foolish enough to publish as Nottingham's in 
1773, and wise enough to omit in the edition of 1790. How any person who 
knew anything of the history of those times could be so strangely deceived, 
it is not easy to understand, particularly as the handwriting bears no resem- 
blance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is 
evidently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the 
King and Queen except at some public place, and whose anecdotes of their 
private life rested on no better authority than coffee-house gossip. 

3 Ronquillo ; Burnet, ii. 2 ; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. In a 
pastoral dialogue between Philander and Palaemon, published in 1691, the 
dislike with which women of fashion regarded William is mentioned. 
Philander says : 

" But man methinks his reason should recall, 
Nor let frail woman work his second fall." 



394 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was 
his bad Enghsh. He spoke our language, but not well. His 
accent was foreign : his diction was inelegant ; and his vocab- 
ulary seems to have been no larger than was necessary for the 
transaction of business. To the difficulty which he felt in 
expressing himself, and to his consciousness that his pronun- 
ciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity and 
the short answers which gave so much offence. Our literature 
he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never 
once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre.^ 
The poets who wrote Pindaric verses in his praise complained 
that their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension .^ 
Those who are acquainted with the panegyrical odes of that 
age will perhaps be of opinion that he did not lose much by 
his ignorance. 

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was 
wanting, and that she was excellently qualified to be the head 
of the Court. She was English by birth, and English also in 
her tastes and feelings. Her face was handsome, her port 
majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable 
and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly 
cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit 
and shrewdness in her conversation ; and her letters were 
so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She 
took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and 
did something towards bringing books into fashion among 
ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life and 
the strict attention which she paid to her religious duties 
were the more respectable, because she was singularly free 
from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as 
vice. In dislike of backbiting, indeed, she and her husband 

1 Tutchin's Observator of November i6. 1706. 

2 Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and who was 
very grateful for it, informs us that the King did not understand poetical 
eulogy. The passage is in a highly curious manuscript, the property of 
Lord Lansdowne. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 395 

cordially agreed ; but they showed their dislike in different 
and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound 
silence, and gave the tale-bearer a look which, as was said 
by a person who had once encountered it, and who took good 
care never to encounter it again, made your story go back 
down your throat.^ Mary had a way of interrupting tattle 
about elopements, duels, and play-debts by asking the tattlers, 
very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her 
favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking, Her 
charities were munificent and judicious ; and, though she 
made no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she 
retrenched from her own state in order to relieve Protestants 
whom persecution had driven from France and Ireland, and 
who were starving in the garrets of London. So amiable was 
her conduct, that she was generally spoken of with esteem 
and tenderness by the most respectable of those who disap- 
proved of the manner in which she had been raised to the 
throne, and even of those who refused to acknowledge her as 
Queen, In the Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons 
which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed anything that 
our age has produced, she was not often mentioned with 
severity. Indeed, she sometimes expressed her surprise at 
finding that libellers who respected nothing else respected her 
name. God, she said, knew where her weakness lay. She 

1 Memoires originaux sur le regne et la cour de Frederic I., Roi de Prusse, 
ecrits par Christophe Comte de Dohna. Berlin, 1S33. It is strange that this 
interesting volume should be almost unknown in England. The only copy 
that I have ever seen of it was kindly given to me by Sir Robert Adair. " Le 
Roi," Dohna says, " avoit une autre qualite tres estimable, qui est celle de 
n'aimer point qu'on rendit de mauvais offices a personne par des railleries." 
The Marquis de la Foret tried to entertain His Majesty at the expense of an 
English nobleman. " Ce prince," says Dohna, " prit son air severe, et, le 
regardant sans mot dire, lui fit rentrer les paroles dans le ventre. Le Marquis 
m'en fit ses plaintes quelques heures apres. 'J'ai mal pris ma bisque,' dit-il; 
' j'ai cru faire I'agreable sur le chapitre de Milord . . . mais j'ai trouve a qui 
parler, et j'ai attrape un regard du roi qui m'a fait passer I'envie de rire.' " 
Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitive about the character of a 
Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, says he, "j'eus a peu pres le 
meme sort que M. de la Foret." 



396 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

was too sensitive to abuse and calumny : He had mercifully 
spared her a trial which was beyond her strength ; and the 
best return which she could make to Him was to discounte- 
nance all malicious reflections on the characters of others. 
Assured that she possessed her husband's entire confidence 
and affection, she turned the edge of his sharp speeches 
sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and 
employed all the influence which she derived from her many 
pleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him.^ 

(e) The Toleration Act 

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, 
the Toleration Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illus- 
trates the peculiar vices and the peculiar excellences of English 
legislation. The science of Politics bears in one respect a close 
analogy to the science of Mechanics, The mathematician can 
easily demonstrate that a certain power, applied by means of 
a certain lever or of a certain system of pulleys, will suffice to 
raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the 
supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend 

1 Compare the account of Mary by the Whig Burnet with the mention of 
her by the Tory Evelyn in his Diary, March 8. 169^, and with what is said of 
her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter to Archbishop Tenison on her 
death in 1695. The impression which the bluntness and reserve of Wilham 
and the grace and gentleness of Mary had made on the populace may be 
traced in the remains of the street poetry of that time. The following conjugal 
dialogue may still be seen on the original broadside : 

Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Queen, 

" My gracious King William, where are you going ? " 

He answered her quickly, " I count him no man 

That telleth his secret unto a woman." 

The Queen with a modest behaviour replied, 

" I wish that kind Providence may be thy guide, 

To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Eord, 

The which will the greatest of comfort afford." 

These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Richard Heber, 
and now the property of Mr. Broderip, by whom it was kindly lent to me. In 
one of the most savage Jacobite pasquinades of 1689, William is described as 

A churle to his wife, which she makes but a jest. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 397 

or break. If the engineer, who has to hft a great mass of real 
granite by the instrumentahty of real timber and real hemp, 
should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in 
treatises on Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the 
imperfection of his materials, his whole apparatus of beams, 
wheels, and ropes would soon come down in ruin, and, with all 
his geometrical skill, he would be found a far inferior builder 
to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of 
the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. 
What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active states- 
man is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most 
important that legislators and administrators should be versed 
in the philosophy of government, as it is most important that 
the architect, who has to fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to 
hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in the 
philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But, as he who has 
actually to build must bear in mind many things never noticed 
by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to 
govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no 
allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or 
Jeremy Bentham. The perfect lawgiver is a just temper 
between the mere man of theory, who can see nothing but 
general principles, and the mere man of business, who can 
see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in 
whom the speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion 
of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years 
been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America 
have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitu- 
tions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable 
noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the 
English legislation the practical element has always predom- 
inated, and not seldom unduly predominated, over the specula- 
tive. To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience ; 
never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; 
never to innovate except when some grievance is felt ; never 
to innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance ; never 



398 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the partic- 
ular case for which it is necessary to provide ; these are the 
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, 
generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty 
Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract in 
political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault. Yet it is, 
perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too 
slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in 
other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid 
progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in 
which there has. been so little retrogression. 

The Toleration Act approaches very near ^o the idea of a 
great English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legis- 
lation, but not intimately acquainted with the temper of the 
sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time 
of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of 
absurdities and contradictions. It will not bear to be tried 
by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried 
by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle 
undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be 
punished by the civil magistrate. This principle the Tolera- 
tion Act not only does not recognize, but positively disclaims. 
Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against Noncon- 
formists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution 
continues to be the general rule. Toleration is the exception. 
Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to conscience is 
given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making 
a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit 
of the Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An 
Independent minister, who is perfectly willing to make the 
declaration required from the Quaker, but who has doubts 
about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the 
penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches before 
he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican doctrine 
touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects the 
Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any 
declaration whatever on the subject. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 399 

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike 
every person who examines the Toleration Act by that standard 
of just reason which is the same in all countries and in all 
ages. But these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, 
when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices 
of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This law, 
abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in polit- 
ical philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the 
utmost skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy 
might have failed to do. That the provisions which have been 
recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent with each 
other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, 
must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their defence 
is this : that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking 
a vast mass of prejudice ; that they put an end, at once and for 
ever, without one division in either House of Parliament, with- 
out one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur 
even from the classes most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a 
persecution which had raged during four generations, which 
had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innumerable 
firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of 
whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands 
of those honest, diligent, and god-fearing yeomen and artisans, 
who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond 
the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs 
of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to 
some shallow speculators, will probably be thought complete 
by statesmen. 

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit 
the doctrine that religious error ought to be left unpunished. 
That doctrine was just then more unpopular than it had ever 
been. For it had, only a few months before, been hypocritically 
put forward as a pretext for persecuting the Established Church, 
for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm, for con- 
fiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise 
of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up 
granting entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may 



400 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

be confidently affirmed that Nottingham would never have 
introduced such a bill ; that all the bishops, Burnet included, 
would have voted against it ; that it would have been denounced, 
Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand pulpits, as an insult 
to God and to all Christian men, and as a license to the worst 
heretics and blasphemers ; that it would have been condemned 
almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and 
Sherlock ; that it would have been burned by the mob in half 
the market places of England ; that it would never have 
become the law of the land, and that it \yould have made the 
very name of "toleration odious during many years to the 
majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been 
passed, what would it have effected beyond what was effected 
by the Toleration Act ? 

It is true that the Toleration Act recognized persecution as 
the rule, and granted liberty of conscience only as the excep- 
tion. But it is equally true that the rule remained in force only 
against a few hundreds of Protestant dissenters, and that the 
benefit of the exceptions extended to hundreds of thousands. 

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign 
thirty-four or thirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could 
preach, and to let Penn preach without signing one of those 
articles. But it is equally true that, under this arrangement, 
both Howe and Penn got as entire liberty to preach as they 
could have had under the most philosophical code that Beccaria 
or Jefferson could have framed. 

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of 
grave importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in 
the Commons suggested that it might be desirable to grant 
the toleration only for a term of seven years, and thus to bind 
over the Nonconformists to good behaviour. But this suggestion 
was so unfavourably received that those who made it did not 
venture to divide the House.^ 

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction : the 
bill became law ; and the Puritan divines thronged to the 

1 Commons' Journals, May 17. 1689. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 401 

Quarter Sessions of every county to swear and sign. Many of 
them probably professed their assent to the Articles with some 
tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of Baxter would 
not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an expla- 
nation of the sense in which he understood every proposition 
which seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The 
instrument delivered by him to the Court before which he took 
the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar 
interest. He declared that his approbation of the Athanasian 
Creed was confined to that part which was properly a Creed, 
and that he did not mean to express any assent to the damna- 
tory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the 
article which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any 
other salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those 
who entertain a hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers 
may be admitted to partake in the benefits of Redemption. 
Many of the dissenting clergy of London expressed their 
concurrence in these charitable sentiments.^ 

(/) The Relief of Londonderry 

Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners 
were tortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were 
bound to the defenders of that city, not only by religious and 
national sympathy, but by common interest. For there could 
be no doubt that, if Londonderry fell, the whole Irish army 
would instantly march in irresistible force upon Lough Erne. 
Yet what could be done .'' Some brave men were for making 
a desperate attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds 
were too great. Detachments, however, were sent which infested 
the rear of the blockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one 
occasion, carried away the horses of three entire troops of 
cavalry .2 Still the line of posts which surrounded London- 
derry by land remained unbroken. The river was still strictly 

1 Sense of the subscribed articles by the Ministers of London, 1690; 
Calamy's Historical Additions to Baxter's Life. 

2 Ilamiltpn's True Relation. 



402 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had become 
extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost 
the only meat which could be purchased ; and of horseflesh 
the supply was scanty. It was necessary to make up the 
deficiency with tallow ; and even tallow was doled out with a 
parsimonious hand. 

On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The 
sentinels on the top of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off 
in the bay of Lough Foyle. Thirty vessels of different sizes 
were counted. Signals were made from the steeples and 
returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly understood 
on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded the 
Irish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the 
garrison that Kirke had arrived from England with troops, 
arms, ammunition, and provisions, to relieve the city.^ 

In Londonderry expectation was at the height : but a few 
hours of feverish joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke 
thought it unsafe to make any attempt, either by land or by 
water, on the lines of the besiegers, and retired to the entrance 
of Lough Foyle, where, during several weeks, he lay inactive. 

And now the pressure of famine became every day more 
severe. A strict search was made in all the recesses of. all the 
houses of the city ; and some provisions, which had been 
concealed in cellars by people who had since died or made 
their escape, were discovered and carried to the magazines. 
The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted ; and their 
place was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence 
began, as usual, to make its appearance in the train of hunger. 
Fifteen officers died of fever in one day. The Governor, Baker, 
was among those who sank under the disease. His place was 
supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne.^ 

Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his 

squadron were on the coast of Ulster. The alarm was great 

at the Castle. Even before this news arrived, Avaux had 

given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton was unequal to 

1 Walker. " Walker ; Mackenzie. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 403 

the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been resolved 
that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent 
down with all speed.^ 

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the headquarters 
of the besieging army. At first he attempted to undermine 
the walls ; but his plan was discovered ; and he was compelled 
to abandon it after a sharp fight, in which more than a hundred 
of his men were slain. Then his fury rose to a strange pitch. 
He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in expectancy, trained 
in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed, during 
many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country 
gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by 
a wall which any good engineer would at once have pronounced 
untenable ! He raved, he blasphemed, in a language of his 
own, made up of all the dialects spoken from the Baltic to the 
Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground : he would 
spare no living thing ; no, not the young girls ; not the babies 
at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punish- 
ment for them : he would rack them, he would roast them 
alive. In his rage he ordered a shell to be flung into the town 
with a letter containing a horrible menace. He would, he said, 
gather into one body all the Protestants who had remained at 
their homes between Charlemont and the sea, old men, women, 
children, many of them near in blood and affection to the 
defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be 
the authority by which it had been given, should be respected. 
The multitude thus brought together should be driven under 
the walls of Londonderry, and should there be starved to death 
in the sight of their countrymen, their friends, their kinsmen. 
This was no idle threat. Parties were instantly sent out in all 
directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the morning of the 
second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged 
with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many 
of whom had protections granted by James, were dragged to 
the gates of the city. It was imagined that the piteous sight 

1 Avaux, June ^. 1689. 



404 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

would quell the spirit of the colonists. But the only effect 
was to rouse that spirit to still greater energy. An order was 
immediately put forth that no man should utter the word 
Surrender on pain of death ; and no man uttered that word. 
Several prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they 
had been well treated, and had received as good rations as 
were measured out to the garrison. They were now closely con- 
fined. A gallows was erected on one of the bastions ; and a 
message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him to send a con- 
fessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The prisoners 
in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received no 
answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, 
Richard Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their 
blood for their King ; but they thought it hard to die the igno- 
minious death of thieves in consequence of the barbarity of 
their own companions in arms. Hamilton, though a man of 
lax principles, was not cruel. He had been disgusted by the 
inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command, 
could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He 
however remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on 
this occasion as it was natural that brave men should feel, and 
declared, weeping with pity and indignation, that they. should 
never cease to have in their ears the cries of the poor women 
and children who had been driven at the point of the pike to 
die of famine between the camp and the city. Rosen persisted 
during forty-eight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures 
perished : but Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever ; and 
he saw that his crime was likely to produce nothing but hatred 
and obloquy. He at length gave way, and suffered the sur- 
vivors to withdraw. The garrison then took down the gallows 
which had been erected on the bastion.^ 

When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, 
though by no means prone to compassion, was startled by an 

1 Walker; Mackenzie; T.ight to the Blind; Kin<:;, iii. 13; Leslie's Answer 
to King; Life of James, ii. 366. I ought to say that on this occasion King is 
unjust to James. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 405 

atrocity of which tlic civil wars of ICngland had furnished no 
example, and was displeased by learning that protections, given 
by his authority, and guaranteed by his honour, had been 
publicly declared to be nullities. He complained to the French 
ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully 
justified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could 
not refrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, 
he would have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to under- 
stand this effeminate sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had 
been done that was at all reprehensible ; and he had some 
difficulty in commanding himself when he heard the King and 
the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of wholesome 
severity.^ In truth, the French ambassador and the French 
general were well paired. There was a great difference doubt- 
less, in appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, 
and refined politician, whose dexterity and suavity had been 
renowned at the most polite courts of Europe, and the military 
adventurer, whose look and voice reminded all who came near 
him that he had been born in a half-savage country, that he 
had risen from the ranks, and that he had once been sentenced 
to death for marauding. But the heart of the diplomatist was 
really even more callous than that of the soldier. 

Rosen was recalled to Dublin ; and Richard Hamilton was 
again left in the chief command. He tried gentler means than 
those which had brought so much reproach on his predecessor. 
No trick, no lie, which was thought likely to discourage the 
starving garrison was spared. One day a great shout was 
raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of London- 
derry were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing 
on account of the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that 
they had now no chance of being relieved, and were exhorted 
to save their lives by capitulating. They consented to negotiate. 
But what they asked was, that they should be permitted to 

1 Leslie's Answer to King; Avaux, July |\. iTicSq. " Je trouvay I'cxpression 
bien forte : mais je ne voulois rien repondre, car le Roy s'estoit desja fort 
emporte." 



4o6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

depart armed and in military array, by land or by water at 
their choice. They demanded hostages for the exact fulfil- 
ment of these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should 
be sent on board of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such 
terms Hamilton durst not grant : the Governors would abate 
nothing : the treaty was broken off ; and the conflict re- 
commenced.i 

By this time July was far advanced ; and the state of the 
city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The number 
of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and 
disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet that fire was 
sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was 
beaten in : one of the bastions was laid in ruins ; but the 
breaches made by day were repaired by night with indefatigable 
activity. Every attack was still repelled. But the fighting 
men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they could 
scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in the act of strik- 
ing at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very 
small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouth- 
fuls. The stock of salted hides was considerable, and by 
gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage of hunger. 
Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay unburied 
round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to pur- 
chase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and 
sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. 
They were so lean that little meat was likely to be found upon 
them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food. 
The people perished so fast that it was impossible for the 
survivors to perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely 
a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such was 
the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in 
those hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. 
A small fish, caught in the river, was not to be purchased with 
money. The only price for which such a treasure could be 
obtained was some handfuls of oatmeal. Leprosies, such as 

1 Mackenzie. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 407 

strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made existence a 
constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench 
exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. 
That there should be fits of discontent and insubordination 
among men enduring such misery was inevitable. At one 
moment it was suspected that Walker had laid up somewhere 
a secret store of food, and was revelling in private, while he 
exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His 
house was strictly examined : his innocence was fully proved : 
he regained his popularity ; and the garrison, with death in 
near prospect, thronged to the cathedral to hear him preach, 
drank in his earnest eloquence with delight, and went forth 
from the house of God with haggard faces and tottering steps, 
but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed, some 
secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened com- 
munications with the enemy. But it was necessary that all 
such dealings should be carefully concealed. None dared to 
utter publicly any words save words of defiance and stubborn 
resolution. Even in that extremity the general cry was, " No 
surrender ! " And there were not wanting voices which, in low 
tones, added, " First the horses and hides ; and then the 
prisoners ; and then each other." It was afterwards related, 
half in jest, yet not without a horrible mixture of earnest, that 
a corpulent citizen, whose bulk presented a strange contrast to 
the skeletons which surrounded him, thought it expedient to 
conceal himself from the numerous eyes which followed him 
with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets. ^ 

It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison 
that all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough 
Foyle. Communication between the fleet and the city was 
almost impossible. One diver who had attempted to pass the 
boom was drowned. Another was hanged. The language of 
signals was hardly intelligible. On the thirteenth of July, 

1 Walker's Account. " The fat man in Londonderry " became a proverbial 
expression for a person whose prosperity excited the envy and cupidity of his 
less fortunate neighbours. 



4o8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth button came to 
Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained 
assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of 
intense misery had since elapsed ; and the hearts of the most 
sanguine were sick with deferred hope. By no art could the 
provisions which were left be made to hold out two days more.^ 

Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, 
which contained positive orders that Londonderry should be 
relieved. He accordingly determined to make an attempt 
which, as far as appears, he might have made, with at least 
an equally fair prospect of success, six weeks earlier.^ 

Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle 
under his convoy was one called the Mountjoy. The master, 
Micaiah Browning, a native of Londonderry, had brought from 
England a large cargo of provisions. He had, it is said, re- 
peatedly remonstrated against the inaction of the armament. 
He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of succour- 
ing his fellow citizens ; and his offer was accepted. Andrew 
Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great 
quantity of meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger 
and the honour. The two merchantmen were to be escorted 
by the Dartmouth, a frigate of thirty-six guns, commanded by 
Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral of great fame. 

It was the twenty-eighth of July. The sun had just set : the 
evening sermon in the cathedral was over ; and the heartbroken 
congregation had separated, when the sentinels on the tower 

1 This, according to Narcissus Luttrell, was the report made by Captain 
Withers, afterwards a highly distinguished officer, on whom Pope wrote an 
epitaph. 

2 The despatch, which positively commanded Kirke to attack the boom, 
was signed by Schomberg, who had already been appointed commander in 
chief of all the English forces in Ireland. A copy of it is among the Nairne 
MSS. in the Bodleian Library. Wodrow, on no better authority than the 
gossip of a country parish in Dumbartonshire, attributes the relief of London- 
derry to the exhortations of a heroic Scotch preacher named Gordon. I am 
inclined to think that Kirke was more likely to be influenced by a peremptory 
order from Schomberg, than by the united eloquence of a whole synod of 
presbyterian divines. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 409 

saw the sails of three vessels coming up the Foyle, Soon 
there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on the 
alert for miles along both shores. The ships were in extreme 
peril : for the river was low ; and the only navigable channel 
ran very near to the left bank, where the headquarters of the 
enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most 
numerous. Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit 
worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate to cover the 
merchantmen, and used his guns with great effect. At length 
the little squadron came to the place of peril. Then the 
Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the boom. The 
huge barricade cracked and gave way : but the shock was such 
that the Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell 
of triumph rose from the banks : the Irish rushed to their 
boats, and were preparing to board ; but the Dartmouth 
poured on them a well-directed broadside, which threw them 
into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach 
which the Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within 
the fence. Meantime the tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy 
began to move, and soon passed safe through the broken 
stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was no more. 
A shot from one of the batteries had struck him ; and he died 
by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which 
was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just 
been saved by his courage and self-devotion from the most 
frightful form of destruction. The night had closed in before 
the conflict at the boom began ; but the flash of the guns was 
seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and ghastly multitude 
which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy 
grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish 
on both sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died 
within them. One who endured the unutterable anguish of 
that moment has told us that they looked fearfully livid in 
each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had been passed, 
there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock 
before the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population 



410 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

was there to welcome them. A screen made of casks filled 
with earth was hastily thrown up to protect the landing place 
from the batteries on the other side of the river ; and then the 
work of unloading began. First were rolled on shore barrels 
containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then came great 
cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks 
of pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours 
before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of 
salted hide had been weighed out with niggardly care to every 
fighting man. The ration which each now received was three 
pounds of flour, ^wo pounds of beef, and a pint of pease. It is 
easy to imagine with what tears grace was said over the suppers 
of that evening. There was little sleep on either side of the 
wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of the 
ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night ; and all 
night the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish 
guns with a peal of joyous defiance. Through the three fol- 
lowing days the batteries of the enemy continued to play. 
But on the third night flames were seen arising from the camp ; 
and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins 
marked the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers ; 
and the citizens saw far off the long column of pikes and 
standards retreating up the left bank of the Foyle towards 
Strabane.^ 

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals 
of the British isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. 
The garrison had been reduced from about seven thousand 
effective men to about three thousand. The loss of the be- 
siegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker estimated it at 
eight thousand men. It is certain from the despatches of Avaux 
that the regiments which returned from the blockade had been 
so much thinned that many of them were not more than 

1 Walker ; Mackenzie ; Histoire de la Revolution d'Irlande, Amsterdam, 
1691 ; London Gazette, Aug. y\. 1689; Letter of Buchan among the Nairne 
MSS.; Life of Sir John Leake; The Londeriad ; Observations on Mr. 
Walker's Account of the Siege of Londonderry, licensed Oct. 4. 1689. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 411 

two hundred strong. Of thirty-six French gunners who had 
superintended the cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or 
disabled.^ The means both of attack and of defence had 
undoubtedly been such as would have moved the great warriors 
of the Continent to laughter ; and this is the very circumstance 
which gives so peculiar an interest to the history of the contest. 
It was a contest, not between engineers, but between nations ; 
and the victory remained with the nation which, though in- 
ferior in number, was superior in civilization, in capacity for 
self-government, and in stubbornness of resolution.^ 

As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a 
deputation from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited 
Kirke to take the command. He came accompanied by a long 
train of officers, and was received in state by the two Gov- 
ernors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under 
the pressure of necessity, they had assumed. He remained only 
a few days ; but he had time to show enough of the incurable 
vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished by 
austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, 
no outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such 
quantities of provisions had been landed from the fleet, that 
there was in every house a plenty never before known. A few 
days earlier a man had been glad to obtain for twenty pence a 
mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones of a starved horse. 
A pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence. 
Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which 
had been thinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes 
which the shells had ploughed in the ground, and in repairing 
the battered roofs of the houses. The recollection of past 

^ Avaux to Seignelay, July ^| ; to Louis, Aug. -f^. 

2 " You will see here, as you have all along, that the tradesmen of London- 
derry had more skill in their defence than the great officers of the Irish army 
in their attacks." — Light to the Blind. The author of this work is furious 
against the Irish gunners. The boom, he thinks, would never have been broken 
if they had done their duty. V\^ere they drunk ? Were they traitors ? He does 
not determine the point. " Lord," he exclaims, " who seest the hearts of people, 
we leave the judgment of this affair to thy mercy. In the interim those gun- 
ners lost Ireland." 



412 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

dangers and privations, and the consciousness of having de- 
served well of the English nation and of all Protestant 
Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honest 
pride. That pride grew stronger when they received from 
William a letter acknowledging, in the most affectionate lan- 
guage, the debt which he owed to the brave and trusty citizens 
of his good city. The whole population crowded to the Dia- 
mond to hear the royal epistle read. At the close all the guns on 
the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy ; all the ships in the river 
made answer ; barrels of ale were broken up ; and the health of 
their Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry. 
Five generations have since passed away ; and still the wall 
of Londonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy 
of Marathon was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from 
a bastion which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the 
enemy, is seen far up and far down the P'oyle. On the summit 
is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most 
terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage 
of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, 
pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his fam- 
ished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. 
Such a monument was well deserved : yet it was scarcely 
needed : for in truth the whole city is to this day a monument 
of the great deliverance. The wall is carefully preserved ; nor 
would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabit- 
ants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure 
which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their 
religion.! The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. 
The bastions have been turned into little gardens. Here and 
there, among the shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old 
culverins which scattered bricks, cased with lead, among the 
Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of 
London, was distinguished, during the hundred and five mem- 
orable days, by the loudness of its report, and still bears the 

1 In a collection entitled " Derriana," which was published more than sixty 
years ago, is a curious letter on this subject. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 413 

name of Roaring Meg. The cathedral is filled with relics and 
trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hun- 
dreds of shells which were thrown into the city. Over the altar 
are still seen the F'rench fiagstaves, taken by the garrison in a 
desperate sally. The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon 
have long been dust : but their place has been supplied by new 
banners, the work of the fairest hands of Ulster. The anni- 
versary of the day on which the gates were closed, and the 
anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have 
been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, 
banquets, and sermons : Lundy has been executed in effigy ; 
and the sword, said by tradition to be that of Maumont, has, 
on great occasions, been carried in triumph. There is still a 
Walker Club and a Murray Club. The humble tombs of the 
Protestant captains have been carefully sought out, repaired, 
and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the sentiment 
which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which 
belongs to the higher and purer part of human nature, and 
which adds not a little to the strength of states. A people 
which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote 
ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remem- 
bered with pride by remote descendants. Yet it is impossible 
for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed com- 
placency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commem- 
orates her deliverance, and on the honours which she pays to 
those who saved her. Unhappily the animosities of her brave 
champions have descended with their glory. The faults which 
are ordinarily found in dominant castes and dominant sects 
have not seldom shown themselves without disguise at her 
festivities ; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude 
which have resounded from her pulpits have too often been 
mingled words of wrath and defiance. 



414 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

(g) The King's Touch for Scrofula 

The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed 
indeed to the established worship ; but his was a local and 
occasional conformity. For some ceremonies to which High 
Churchmen were attached he had a distaste which he was at 
no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had been to give 
orders that in his private chapel the service should be said in- 
stead of being sung ; and this arrangement, though warranted 
by the rubric, caused much murmuring.^ It was known that he 
was so profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanc- 
tioned by high ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching 
for the scrofula. This ceremony had come down almost un- 
altered from the darkest of the dark ages to the time of 
Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently dispensed the 
healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on 
which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of 
the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in 
all the parish churches of the realm.^ When the appointed 
time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the 
canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household intro- 
duced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth chapter of the 
Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, "They shall 
lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover," had been 
pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought 
up to the King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, 
and hung round the patient's neck a white riband to which 
was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led 
up in succession ; and, as each was touched, the chaplain re- 
peated the incantation, "They shall lay their hands on the sick, 
and they shall recover," Then came the epistle, prayers, an- 
tiphonies, and a benediction. The service may still be found in 

1 William's dislike of the Cathedral service is sarcastically noticed by 
Leslie in the Rehearsal, No. 7. See also a Letter from a Member of the 
House of Commons to his Friend in the Country, 1689, and Bisset's Modern 
Fanatic, 1710. - See the Order in Council of Jan. 9. 16S3. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 415 

the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till 
some time after the accession of George the First that the 
University of Oxford ceased to reprint the Ofifice of Healing 
together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, 
ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this 
mummery ; ^ and, what is stranger still, medical men of high 
note believed, or affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of 
the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeon who 
attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for 
skill ; and more than one of the surgeons who attended 
Charles the Second has left us a solemn profession of faith in 
the King's miraculous power. One of them is not ashamed to 
tell us that the gift was communicated by the unction adminis- 
tered at the coronation ; that the cures were so numerous and 
sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any 
natural cause ; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of 
faith on the part of the patients ; that Charles once handled a 
scrofulous Quaker and made him a healthy man and a sound 
Churchman in a moment ; that if those who had been healed 
lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hung round 
their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed 
only by a second touch and a second talisman. We cannot 
wonder that when men of science gravely repeated such non- 
sense the vulgar should believe it. Still less can we wonder that 
wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies 
had no power should have eagerly drunk in tales of preternat- 
ural cures : for nothing is so credulous as misery. The crowds 
which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were im- 
mense. Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched 
near a hundred thousand persons. The number seems to have 

iSee Collier's Desertion discussed, 1689. Thomas Carte, who was a disci- 
ple, and, at one time, an assistant of Collier, inserted, so late as the year 1747, 
in a bulky History of England, an exquisitely absurd note, in which he assured 
the world that, to his certain knowledge, the Pretender had cured the scrofula, 
and very gravely inferred that the healing virtue was transmitted by inher- 
itance, and was quite independent of any unction. See Carte's History of 
England, vol. i. page 291. 



4i6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

increased or diminished as the king's popularity rose or fell. 
During that Tory reaction which followed the dissolution of 
the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near him was terrific. 
In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred 
times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the 
sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, 
touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of 
Chester. The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten 
thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater 
but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it 
was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who 
came for the cure from those who came for the gold.^ 

William had too much sense to be duped, and too much 
honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture. 
"It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, 
at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of 
the sick: "give the poor creatures some money, and send 
them away." ^ On one single occasion he was importuned into 
laying his hand on a patient. " God give you better health," 
he said, "and more sense." The parents of scrofulous children 
cried out against his cruelty : bigots lifted up their hands and 
eyes in horror at his impiety : Jacobites sarcastically praised 
him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which 
belonged only to legitimate sovereigns ; and even some Whigs 
thought that he acted unwisely in treating with such marked 
contempt a superstition which had a strong hold on the vulgar 

1 See the Preface to a Treatise on Wounds, by Richard Wiseman, Sergeant 
Chirurgeon to His Majesty, 1676. But the fullest information on this curious 
subject will be found in the Charisma l^asilicon, by John Browne, Chirurgeon 
in ordinary to Mis Majesty, 16S4. See also The Ceremonies used in the Time 
of King Henry VII. for the Healing of them that be Diseased with the King's 
Evil, published by His Majesty's Command, 16S6; Evelyn's Diary, March 28. 
16S4; and Bishop Cartwright's Diary, August 28, 29, and 30. 1687. It is in- 
credible that so large a proportion of the population should have been really 
scrofulous. No doubt many persons who had slight and transient maladies 
were brought to the king, and the recovery of these persons kept up the vul. 
gar belief in the efficacy of his touch. 

2 Paris Gazette, April 23. 1689. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 417 

mind : but William was not to be moved, and was accordingly 
set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a 
puritan. 1 

i/i) Rise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption 

The history of the rise, progress, and decline of parlia- 
mentary corruption in England still remains to be written. No 
subject has called forth a greater quantity of eloquent vituper- 
ation and stinging sarcasm. Three generations of serious and 
of sportive writers wept and laughed over the venality of the 
senate. That venality was denounced on the hustings, anathe- 
matized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage ; was 
attacked by Pope in brilliant verse and by Bolingbroke in 
stately prose, by Swift with savage hatred and by Gay with 
festive malice. The voices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson 
and Akenside, of Smollett and P'ielding, contributed to swell 
the cry. But none of those who railed or of those who jested 
took the trouble to verify the phaenomena, or to trace them to 
the real causes. 

Sometimes the evil was imputed to the depravity of a par- 
ticular minister : but, when he had been driven from power, 
and when those who had most loudly accused him governed 
in his stead, it was found that the change of men had produced 
no change of system. Sometimes the evil was imputed to the 
degeneracy of the national character. Luxury and cupidity, it 
was said, had produced in our country the same effect which 
they had produced of old in the Roman republic. The modern 
Englishman was to the Englishman of the sixteenth century 
what Verres and Curio were to Dentatus and Fabricius. Those 
who held this language were as ignorant and shallow as people 
generally are who extol the past at the expense of the present. 
A man of sense would have perceived that, if the English of 

1 See Whiston's Life of himself. Poor Whiston, who beUeved in everything 
but the Trinity, tells us gravely that the single person whom William touched 
was cured, notwithstanding His Majesty's want of faith. See also the Athenian 
Mercury of January 16. 1691. 



41 8 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y 

the time of George the Second had really been more sordid 
and dishonest than their forefathers, the deterioration would 
not have shown itself in one place alone. The progress of 
judicial venality and of official venality would have kept pace 
with the progress of parliamentary venality. But nothing is 
more certain than that, while the legislature was becoming 
more and more venal, the courts of law and the public offices 
were becoming purer and purer. The representatives of the 
people were undoubtedly more mercenary in the days of Hard- 
wicke and Pelham than in the days of the Tudors. But the 
Chancellors of the Tudors took plate, jewels, and purses of 
broad pieces, from suitors without scruple or shame ; and Hard- 
wicke would have committed for contempt any suitor who had 
dared to bring him a present. The Treasurers of the Tudors 
raised princely fortunes by the sale of places, titles, and par- 
dons ; and Pelham would have ordered his servants to turn 
out of his house any man who had offered him money for a 
peerage or a commissionership of customs. It is evident, there- 
fore, that the prevalence of corruption in the Parliament cannot 
be ascribed to a general depravation of morals. The taint was 
local : we must look for some local cause ; and such a cause 
will without difficulty be found. 

Under our ancient sovereigns the House of Commons rarely 
interfered with the executive administration. The Speaker 
was charged not to let the members meddle with matters of 
State. If any gentleman was very troublesome, he was cited 
before the Privy Council, interrogated, reprimanded, and sent 
to meditate on his undutiful conduct in the Tower. The 
Commons did their best to protect themselves by keeping 
their deliberations secret, by excluding strangers, by making it 
a crime to repeat out of doors what had passed within doors. 
But these precautions were of small avail. In so large an 
assembly there were always tale-bearers ready to carry the evil 
report of their brethren to the palace. To oppose the Court 
was therefore a service of serious danger. In those days, of 
course, there was little or no buying of votes. For an honest 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 419 

man was not to be bought ; and it was much cheaper to 
intimidate or to coerce a knave than to buy him. 

For a very different reason there has been no direct buying 
of votes within the memory of the present generation. The 
House of Commons is now supreme in the State, but is 
accountable to the nation. Even those members who are not 
chosen by large constituent bodies are kept in awe by pub- 
lic opinion. Everything is printed : everything is discussed : 
every material word uttered in debate is read by a million of 
people on the morrow. Within a few hours after an important 
division, the lists of the majority and the minority are scanned 
and analyzed in every town from Plymouth to Inverness. If 
a name be found where it ought not to be, the apostate is 
certain to be reminded in sharp language of the promises 
which he has broken and of the professions which he has 
belied. At present, therefore, the best way in which a govern- 
ment can secure the support of a majority of the representative 
body is by gaining the confidence of the nation. 

But between the time when our Parliaments ceased to be 
controlled by royal prerogative and the time when they began 
to be constantly and effectually controlled by public opinion 
there was a long interval. After the Restoration, no govern- 
ment ventured to return to those methods by which, before 
the civil war, the freedom of deliberation had been restrained. 
A member could no longer be called to account for his 
harangues or his votes. He might obstruct the passing of 
bills of supply : he niight arraign the whole foreign policy of 
the country : he might lay on the table articles of impeach- 
ment against all the chief ministers ; and he ran not the 
smallest risk of being treated as Morrice had been treated by 
Elizabeth, or Eliot by Charles the First. The senator now 
stood in no awe of the Court. Nevertheless, all the defences 
behind which the feeble Parliaments of the sixteenth century 
had entrenched themselves against the attacks of prerogative 
were not only still kept up, but were extended and strength- 
ened. No politician seems to have been aware that these 



420 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

defences were no longer needed for their original purpose, and 
had begun to serve a purpose very different. The rules which 
had been originally designed to secure faithful representatives 
against the displeasure of the Sovereign, now operated to 
secure unfaithful representatives against the displeasure of the 
people, and proved much more effectual for the latter end than 
they had ever been for the former. It was natural, it was in- 
evitable, that, in a legislative body emancipated from the 
restraints of the sixteenth century, and not yet subjected to the 
restraints of the nineteenth century, in a legislative body which 
feared neither - the King nor the public, there should be 
corruption. 

The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days 
of the Cabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of the wicked 
Five, had the merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom 
it was no longer possible to send to prison, might be turned 
into a courtier by a goldsmith's note. Clifford's example was 
followed by his successors. It soon became a proverb that a 
Parliament resembled a pump. Often, the wits said, when a 
pump appears to be dry, if a very small quantity of water is 
poured in, a great quantity of water gushes out : and so, when 
a Parliament appears to be niggardly, ten thousand pounds 
judiciously given in bribes will often produce a million in 
supplies. The evil was not diminished, nay, it was aggravated, 
by that Revolution which freed our country from so many other 
evils. The House of Commons was now more powerful than 
ever as against the Crown, and yet was not more strictly 
responsible than formerly to the nation. The government had 
a new motive for buying the members ; and the members had 
no new motive for refusing to sell themselves. William, in- 
deed, had an aversion to bribery : he resolved to abstain from 
it ; and, during the first year of his reign, he kept his resolu- 
tion. Unhappily the events of that year did not encourage 
him to persevere in his good intentions. As soon as Caer- 
marthen was placed at the head of the internal administration 
of the realm, a complete change took place. He was in truth 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 421 

no novice in the art of purchasing votes. He had, sixteen 
years before, succeeded Chfford at the Treasury, had inherited 
Chfford's tactics, had improved upon them, and had employed 
them to an extent which would have amazed the inventor. 
From the day on which Caermarthen was called a second time 
to the chief direction of affairs, parliamentary corruption con- 
tinued to be practised, with scarcely any intermission, by a long 
succession of statesmen, till the close of the Americafi war. 
Neither of the great English parties can justly charge the other 
with any peculiar guilt on this account. The Tories were the 
first who introduced the system and the last who clung to it : 
but it attained its greatest vigour in the time of Whig ascend- 
ency. The extent to which parliamentary support was bartered 
for money cannot be with any precision ascertained. But it 
seems probable that the number of hirelings was greatly exag- 
gerated by vulgar report, and was never large, though often 
sufficient to turn the scale on important divisions. An unprin- 
cipled minister eagerly accepted the services of these mercena- 
ries. An honest minister reluctantly submitted, for the sake of 
the commonwealth, to what he considered as a shameful and 
odious extortion. But during many years every minister, what- 
ever his personal character might be, consented, willingly or 
unwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in 
which the Parliament could then be managed. It at length 
became as notorious that there was a market for votes at the 
Treasury as that there was a market for cattle in Smithfield. 
Numerous demagogues out of power declaimed against this 
vile traffic : but every one of those demagogues, as soon as he 
was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to 
engage in that traffic, or at least to connive at it. Now and 
then perhaps a man who had romantic notions of public virtue 
refused to be himself the paymaster of the corrupt crew, and 
averted his eyes while his less scrupulous colleagues did that 
which he knew to be indispensable, and yet felt to be degrad- 
ing. But the instances of this prudery were rare indeed. The 
doctrine generally received, even among upright and honourable 



422 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

politicians, was that it was shameful to receive bribes, but 
that it was necessary to distribute them. It is a remarkable 
fact that the evil reached the greatest height during the admin- 
istration of Henry Pelham, a statesman of good intentions, of 
spotless morals in private life, and of exemplary disinterested- 
ness. It is not difficult to guess by what arguments he and 
other well-meaning men, who, like him, followed the fashion 
of their age, quieted their consciences. No casuist, however 
severe, has denied that it may be a duty to give what it is a 
crime to take. It was infamous in Jeffreys to demand money 
for the lives of the unhappy prisoners whom he tried at 
Dorchester and Taunton. But it was not infamous, nay, it was 
laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of a prisoner to con- 
tribute of their substance in order to make up a purse for 
Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who threatened to bastinado a 
Christian captive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, 
was an odious ruffian. But to ransom a Christian captive from 
a Sallee rover was not merely an innocent but a highly meri- 
torious act. It is improper in such cases to use the word cor- 
ruption. Those who receive the filthy lucre are corrupt already. 
He who bribes them does not make them wicked : he finds 
them so ; and he merely prevents their evil propensities from 
producing evil effects. And might not the same plea be urged 
in defence of a minister who, when no other expedient would 
avail, paid greedy and low-minded members of Parliament not 
to ruin their country ? 

{i) The Bank of England 

In the reign of William old men were still living who could 
remember the days when there was not a single banking house 
in the city of London. So late as the time of the Restoration 
every trader had his own strong box in his own house, and, 
when an acceptance was presented to him, told down the 
crowns and Caroluses on his own counter. But the increase 
of wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of 
labour. Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 423 

new mode of paying and receiving money had come into 
fashion among the merchants of the capital A class of agents 
arose, whose office was to keep the cash of the commercial 
houses. This new branch of business naturally fell into the 
hands of the goldsmiths, who were accustomed to traffic largely 
in the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great 
masses of bullion could lie secure from fire and from robbers. 
It was at the shops of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street that 
all the payments in coin were made. Other traders gave and 
received nothing but paper. 

This great change did not take place without much opposi- 
tion and clamour. Old-fashioned merchants complained bitterly 
that a class of men who, thirty years before, had confined 
themselves to their proper functions, and had made a fair 
profit by embossing silver bowls and chargers, by setting jewels 
for fine ladies, and by selling pistoles and dollars to gentlemen 
setting out for the Continent, had become the treasurers, and 
were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City. These 
usurers, it was said, played at hazard with what had been 
earned by the industry and hoarded by the thrift of other men. 
If the dice turned up well, the knave who kept the cash became 
an alderman : if they turned up ill, the dupe who furnished 
the cash became a bankrupt. On the other side the conven- 
iences of the modern practice were set forth in animated 
language. The new system, it was said, saved both labour and 
money. Two clerks seated in one countinghouse did what, 
under the old system, must have been done by twenty clerks 
in twenty different establishments. A goldsmith's note might 
be transferred ten times in a morning ; and thus a hundred 
guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what 
would formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed 
through many tills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin 
Friars, and some in Tower Street.^ 

1 See, for example, the Mystery of the New-fashioned Goldsmiths or 
Brokers, 1676; Is not the Hand of Joab in all this? 1676; and an answer 
published in the same year. See also England's Glory in the great Improve- 
ment by Banking and Trade, 1694. 



424 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring 
against the innovation gave way and conformed to the prevail- 
ing usage. The last person who held out, strange to say, was 
Sir Dudley North. When, in 1680, after residing many years 
abroad, he returned to London, nothing astonished or dis- 
pleased him more than the practice of making payments by 
drawing bills on bankers. He found that he could not go on 
Change without being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, 
who, with low bows, begged to have the honour of serving him. 
He lost his temper when his friends asked where he kept his 
cash. "Where should I keep it," he asked, "but in my own 
house ? " With difficulty he was induced to put his money into 
the hands of one of the Lombard Street men, as they were 
called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and some 
of his customers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only 
fifty pounds : but this loss confirmed him in his dislike of the 
whole mystery of banking. It was in vain, however, that he 
exhorted his fellow citizens to return to the good old practice, 
and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in order to spare 
themselves a little trouble. He stood alone against the whole 
community. The advantages of the modern system were felt 
every hour of every day in every part of London ; and people 
were no more disposed to relinquish those advantages for fear 
of calamities which occurred at long intervals than to refrain 
from building houses for fear of fires, or from building ships 
for fear of hurricanes. It is a curious circumstance that a man 
who, as a theorist, was distinguished from all the merchants of 
his time by the largeness of his views and by his superiority 
to vulgar prejudices, should, in practice, have been distinguished 
from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy with which 
he adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after 
the dullest and most ignorant plodders had abandoned that 
mode for one better suited to a great commercial society.^ 

No sooner had banking become a separate and important 
trade, than men began to discuss with earnestness the question 
1 See the Life of Dudley North, by his brother Roger. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 425 

whether it would be expedient to erect a national bank. The 
general opinion seems to have been decidedly in favour of a 
national bank : nor can we wonder at this : for few were then 
aware that trade is in general carried on to much more advan- 
tage by individuals than by great societies ; and banking really 
is one of those few trades which can be carried on to as much 
advantage by a great society as by an individual. Two public 
banks had long been renowned throughout Europe — the Bank 
of Saint George at Genoa, and the Bank of Amsterdam. The 
immense wealth which was in the keeping of those establish- 
ments, the confidence which they inspired, the prosperity which 
they had created, their stability, tried by panics, by wars, by 
revolutions, and found proof against all, were favourite topics. 
The bank of Saint George had nearly completed its third 
century. It had begun to receive deposits and to make loans 
before Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, before Gama had 
turned the Cape, when a Christian Emperor was reigning at 
Constantinople, when a Mahomedan Sultan was reigning at 
Granada, when Florence was a Republic, when Holland obeyed 
a hereditary Prince. All these things had been changed. New 
continents and new oceans had been discovered. The Turk 
was at Constantinople : the Castilian was at Granada : Florence 
had its hereditary Prince : Holland was a Republic : but the 
Bank of Saint George was still receiving deposits and making 
loans. The Bank of Amsterdam was little more than eighty 
years old : but its solvency had stood severe tests. Even in 
the terrible crisis of 1672, when the whole Delta of the Rhine 
was overrun by the French armies, when the white flags were 
seen from the top of the Stadthouse, there was one place 
where, amidst the general consternation and confusion, tran- 
quillity and security were still to be found ; and that place was 
the Bank. Why should not the Bank of London be as great 
and as durable as the Banks of Genoa and of Amsterdam ? 
Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second several 
plans were proposed, examined, attacked, and defended. Some 
pamphleteers maintained that a national bank ought to be 



426 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

under the direction of the King. Others thought that the 
management ought to be entrusted to the Lord Mayor, Alder- 
men, and Common Council of the capital.^ After the Revo- 
lution the subject was discussed with an animation before 
unknown. For, under the influence of liberty, the breed of 
political projectors multiplied exceedingly. A crowd of plans, 
some of which resemble the fancies of a child or the dreams 
of a man in a fever, were pressed on the government. Pre-em- 
inently conspicuous among the political mountebanks, whose 
busy faces were seen every day in the lobby of the House of 
Commons, were -John Briscoe and Hugh Chamberlayne, two 
projectors worthy to have been members of that Academy 
which Gulliver found at Lagado. These men affirmed that the 
one cure for every distemper of the State was a Land Bank. 
A Land Bank would work for England miracles such as had 
never been wrought for Israel, miracles exceeding the heaps 
of quails and the daily shower of manna. There would be no 
taxes ; and yet the Exchequer would be full to overflowing. 
There would be no poor rates ; for there would be no poor. 
The income of every landowner would be doubled. The profits 
of every merchant would be increased. In short, the island 
would, to use Briscoe's words, be the paradise of the world. 
The only losers would be the moneyed men, those worst 
enemies of the nation, who had done more injury to the gentry 
and yeomanry than an invading army from France would have 
had the heart to do.^ 

These blessed effects the Land Bank was to produce simply 
by issuing enormous quantities of notes on landed security. 

1 See a pamphlet entitled Corporation Credit ; or a Bank of Credit, made 
Current by Common Consent in London, more Useful and Safe than Money. 

2 A proposal by Dr. Hugh Chamberlayne, in Essex Street, for a Bank of 
Secure Current Credit to be founded upon Land, in order to the General 
Good of Landed Men, to the great Increase in the Value of Land, and the no 
less Benefit of Trade and Commerce, 1695 ! Proposals for the supplying their 
Majesties with Money on Easy Terms, exempting the Nobility, Gentry, &c., 
from Taxes, enlarging their Yearly Estates, and enriching all the Subjects of 
the Kingdom by a National Land Bank; by John Briscoe. "O fortunatos 
nimium bona si sua norint Anglicanos." Third Edition, 1696. Briscoe seems 
to have been as much versed in Latin literature as in political economy. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 427 

The doctrine of the projectors was that every person who had 
real property ought to have, besides that property, paper 
money to the full value of that property. Thus, if his estate 
was worth two thousand pounds, he ought to have his estate 
and two thousand pounds in paper money.^ Both Briscoe 
and Chamberlayne treated with the greatest contempt the 
notion that there could be an overissue of paper as long as 
there was, for every ten pound note, a piece of land in the 
country worth ten pounds. Nobody, they said, would accuse 
a goldsmith of overissuing as long as his vaults contained 
guineas and crowns to the full value of all the notes which 
bore his signature. Indeed no goldsmith had in his vaults 
guineas and crowns to the full value of all his paper. And 
was not a square mile of rich land in Taunton Dean at least 
as well entitled to be called wealth as a bag of gold or silver .? 
The projectors could not deny that many people had a prej- 
udice in favour of the precious metals, and that therefore, if 
the Land Bank were bound to cash its notes, it would very 
soon stop payment. This difficulty they got over by proposing 
that the notes should be inconvertible, and that everybody 
should be forced to take them. 

The speculations of Chamberlayne on the subject of the cur- 
rency may possibly find admirers even in our own time. But 
to his other errors he added an error which began and ended 
with him. He was fool enough to take it for granted, in all 
his reasonings, that the value of an estate varied directly as 

1 In confirmation of what is said in the text, I extract a single paragraph 
from Briscoe's proposals. "Admit a gentleman hath barely 100/. per annum 
estate to live on, and hath a wife and four children to provide for: this person, 
supposing no taxes were upon his estates, must be a great husband to be able 
to keep his charge, but cannot think of laying up anything to place out his 
children in the world: but according to this proposed method he may give his 
children 500/. a piece and have 90/. per annum left for himself and his wife to 
live upon, the which he may also leave to such of his children as he pleases 
after his and his wife's decease. For first having settled his estate of 100/. per 
annum, as in proposals i. 3., he may have bills of credit for 2000/. for his own 
proper use, for los. per cent, per annum, as in proposal 22., which is but 10/. 
per annum for the 2000/., which being deducted out of his estate of 100/. per 
annum, there remains 90/. per annum clear to himself." It ought to be observed 
that this nonsense reached a third edition. 



428 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the duration. He maintained that if the annual income derived 
from a manor were a thousand pounds, a grant of that manor 
for twenty years must be worth twenty thousand pounds, and a 
grant for a hundred years worth a hundred thousand pounds. 
If, therefore, the lord of such a manor would pledge it for a 
hundred years to the Land Bank, the Land Bank might, on 
that security, instantly issue notes for a hundred thousand 
pounds. On this subject Chamberlayne was proof even to 
arithmetical demonstration. He was reminded that the fee 
simple of land would not sell for more than twenty years' pur- 
chase. To say, therefore, that a term of a hundred years was 
worth five times as much as a term of twenty years, was to 
say that a term of a hundred years was worth five times the fee 
simple ; in other words, that a hundred was five times infinity. 
Those who reasoned thus were refuted by being told that they 
were usurers; and it should seem that a large number of 
country gentlemen thought the refutation complete.^ 

In December, 1693, Chamberlayne laid, his plan, in all its 
naked absurdity, before the Commons, and petitioned to be 
heard. He confidently undertook to raise eight thousand 
pounds on every freehold estate of a hundred and fifty pounds 
a year which should be brought, as he expressed it, into his 
Land Bank, and this without dispossessing the freeholder.^ 
All the squires in the House must have known that the fee 

^ See Chamberlayne's Proposal, his Positions supported by the Reasons 
explaining the Office of Land Credit, and his Bank Dialogue. See also an 
excellent little tract on the other side entitled " A Bank Dialogue between 
Dr. H. C. and a Country Gentleman, 1696," and " Some Remarks upon a 
nameless and scurrilous Libel entitled a Bank Dialogue between Dr. H. C. 
and a. Country Gentleman, in a Letter to a Person of Quality." 

2 Commons' Journals, Dec. 7. 1693. I ^™ afraid that I may be suspected 
of exaggerating the absurdity of this scheme. I therefore transcribe the most 
important part of the petition. " In consideration of the freeholders bringing 
their lands into this bank, for a fund of current credit, to be established by 
Act of Parliament, it is now proposed that, for every 1 50/. per annum, secured 
for 150 years, for but one hundred yearly payments of 100/. per annum, free 
from all manner of taxes and deductions whatsoever, every such freeholder 
shall receive 4000/. in the said current credit, and shall have 2000/. more to put 
into the fishery stock for his proper benefit; and there may be further 2000/. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



429 



simple of such an estate would hardly fetch three thousand 
pounds in the market. That less than the fee simple of such 
an estate could, by any device, be made to produce eight 
thousand pounds, would, it might have been thought, have 
seemed incredible to the most illiterate foxhunter that could 
be found on the benches. Distress, however, and animosity 
had made the landed gentlemen credulous. They insisted on 
referring Chamberlayne's plan to a committee ; and the com- 
mittee reported that the plan was practicable, and would tend 
to the benefit of the nation.^ But by this time the united 
force of demonstration and derision had begun to produce an 
effect even on the most ignorant rustics in the House, The 
report lay unnoticed on the table ; and the country was saved 
from a calamity compared with which the defeat of Landen 
and the loss of the Smyrna fleet would have been blessings. 

All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so 
absurd as Chamberlayne. One among them, William Paterson, 
was an ingenious, though not always a judicious, speculator. 
Of his early life little is known except that he was a native of 
Scotland, and that he had been in the West Indies. In what 
character he had visited the West Indies was a matter about 
which his contemporaries differed. His friends said that he 
had been a missionary ; his enemies that he had been a 
buccaneer. He seems to have been gifted by nature with 
fertile invention, an ardent temperament, and great powers of 
persuasion, and to have acquired somewhere in the course of 
his vagrant life a perfect knowledge of accounts. 

This man submitted to the government, in 1691, a plan of 
a national bank ; and his plan was favourably received both 
by statesmen and by merchants. But years passed away ; and 
nothing was done, till, in the spring of 1694, it became abso- 
lutely necessary to find some new mode of defraying the 

reserved at the Parliament's disposal towards the carrying on this present 
war. . . . The freeholder is never to quit the possession of his said estate 
unless the yearly rent happens to be in arrear." 
^ Commons' Journals, Feb. 5. 169I. 



430 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

charges of the war. Then at length the scheme devised by 
the poor and obscure Scottish adventurer was taken up in 
earnest by Montague. With Montague was closely allied 
Michael Godfrey, the brother of that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey 
whose sad and mysterious death had, fifteen years before, pro- 
duced a terrible outbreak of popular feeling. Michael was one 
of the ablest, most upright, and most opulent of the merchant 
princes of London. He was, as might have been expected 
from his near connection with the martyr of the Protestant 
faith, a zealous Whig. Some of his writings are still extant, 
and prove him to have had a strong and clear mind. 

By these two distinguished men Paterson's scheme was 
fathered. Montague undertook to manage the House of 
Commons, Godfrey to manage the City. An approving vote 
was obtained from the Committee of Ways and Means : and a 
bill, the title of which gave occasion to many sarcasms, was 
laid on the table. It was indeed not easy to guess that a bill, 
which purported only to impose a new duty on tonnage for 
the benefit of such persons as should advance money towards 
carrying on the war, was really a bill creating the greatest 
commercial institution that the world had ever seen. 

The plan was that twelve hundred thousand pounds should 
be borrowed by the government on what was then considered 
as the moderate interest of eight per cent. In order to induce 
capitalists to advance the money promptly on terms so favour- 
able to the public, the subscribers were to be incorporated by 
the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of 
England. The corporation was to have no exclusive privilege, 
and was to be restricted from trading in anything but bills of 
exchange, bullion, and forfeited pledges. 

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war 
broke out as furious as that between the swearers and the non- 
swearers, or as that between the Old East India Company and 
the New East India Company. The projectors who had failed 
to gain the ear of the government fell like madmen on their 
more fortunate brother. All the goldsmiths and pawnbrokers 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 431 

set up a howl of rage. Some discontented Tories predicted 
ruin to the monarchy. It was remarkable, they said, that Banks 
and Kings had never existed together. Banks were republican 
institutions. There were flourishing banks at Venice, at ■Genoa, 
at Amsterdam, and at Hamburg. But who had ever heard of 
a Bank of France or a Bank of Spain ? ^ Some discontented 
Whigs, on the other hand, predicted ruin to our liberties. 
Here, they said, is an instrument of tyranny more formidable 
than the High Commission, than the Star Chamber, than even 
the fifty thousand soldiers of Oliver. The whole wealth of the 
nation will be in the hands of the Tonnage Bank — such was 
the nickname then in use — and the Tonnage Bank will be 
in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of the purse, the 
one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will be 
transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and 
Directors of the new Company. This last consideration was 
really of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the authors 
of the bill. A clause was therefore most properly inserted 
which inhibited the Bank from advancing money to the Crown 
without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this 
salutary rule was to be punished by forfeiture of three times 
the sum advanced ; and it was provided that the King should 
not have power to remit any part of the penalty. 

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Com- 
mons more easily than might have been expected from the 
violence of the adverse clamour. In truth, the Parliament was 
under duress. Money must be had, and could in no other 
way be had so easily. What passed when the House had re- 
solved itself into a committee cannot be discovered : but, while 
the Speaker was in the chair, no division took place. 

The bill, however, was not safe when it had reached the 
Upper House. Some Lords suspected that the plan of a 
national bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting 
the moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. 
Others thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not 

1 Account of the Intended Bank of England, 1694. 



432 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

to have been submitted to them in such a form. Whether it 
would be safe to call into existence a body which might one 
day rule the whole commercial world, and how such a body 
should be constituted, were questions which ought not to be 
decided by one branch of the Legislature. The Peers ought 
to be at perfect liberty to examine all the details of the pro- 
posed scheme, to suggest amendments, to ask for conferences. 
It was therefore most unfair that the law establishing the Bank 
should be sent up as part of a law granting supplies to the 
Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hope that the session 
would end with- a quarrel between the Houses, that the Tonnage 
Bill would be lost, and that William would enter on the cam- 
paign without money. It was already May, according to the 
New Style. The London season was over ; and many noble 
families had left Covent Garden and Soho Square for their 
woods and hayfields. But summonses were sent out. There was 
a violent rush of Earls and Barons back to town. The benches 
which had lately been deserted were crowded. The sittings 
began at an hour unusually early, and were prolonged to an 
hour unusually late. On the day on which the bill was com- 
mitted the contest lasted without intermission from nine in the 
morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair. 
Nottingham and Rochester proposed to strike out all the clauses 
which related to the Bank. Something was said about the dan- 
ger of setting up a gigantic corporation which might soon give 
law to the King and the three Estates of the Realm. But the 
Peers seemed to be most moved by the appeal which was made 
to them as landlords. The whole scheme, it was asserted, was 
intended to enrich usurers at the expense of the nobility and 
gentry. Persons who had laid by money would rather put it 
into the Bank than lend it on mortgage at moderate interest. 
Caermarthen said little or nothing in defence of what was, in 
truth, the work of his rivals and enemies. He owned that 
there were grave objections to the mode in which the Commons 
had provided for the public service of the year. But would 
their Lordships amend a money bill ? Would they engage in 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 433 

a contest of which the end must be that they must either yield, 
or incur the grave responsibihty of leaving the Channel with- 
out a fleet during the summer ? This argument prevailed ; and, 
on a division, the amendment was rejected by forty-three 
votes to thirty-one. A few hours later the bill received the 
royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued.^ 

In the City the success of Montague's plan was complete. 
It was then at least as difficult to raise a million at eight per 
cent, as it would now be to raise forty millions at four per cent. 
It had been supposed that contributions would drop in very 
slowly ; and a considerable time had therefore been allowed 
by the Act. This indulgence was not needed. So popular was 
the new investment that on the day on which the books were 
opened three hundred thousand pounds were subscribed : three 
hundred thousand more were subscribed during the next forty- 
eight hours ; and in ten days, to the delight of all the friends 
of the government, it was announced that the list was full. 
The whole sum which the Corporation was bound to lend to the 
State was paid into the Exchequer before the first instalment 
was due. 2 Somers gladly put the Great Seal to a charter 
framed in conformity with the terms prescribed by Parliament ; 
and the Bank of England commenced its operations in the 
house of the Company of Grocers. There, during many years, 
directors, secretaries, and clerks might be seen labouring in 
different parts of one spacious hall. The persons employed by 
the Bank were originally only fifty-four. They are now nine 
hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries amounted at first to 
only four thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. It now 
exceeds two hundred and ten thousand pounds. We may there- 
fore fairly infer that the incomes of commercial clerks are, on 
an average, about three times as large in the reign of Victoria 
as they were in the reign of William the Third.^ 

1 See the Lords' Journals of April 23, 24, 25. 1694, and the letter of 
L'lTermitage to the States General dated ^E^lifl: 

'^ May 4. 

- Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, June, 1694. 

3 Heath's Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers ; Francis's 
Jiistory of the Bank of England. 



434 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing 
himself of the financial difficulties of the country, rendered an 
inestimable service to his party. During several generations 
the Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. It was 
Whig, not accidentally, but necessarily. It must have instantly 
stopped payment if it had ceased to receive the interest on the 
sum which it had advanced to the government ; and of that 
interest James would not have paid one farthing. Seventeen 
years after the passing of the Tonnage Bill, Addison, in one 
of his most ingenious and graceful little allegories, described 
the situation of .the great Company through which the immense 
wealth of London was constantly circulating. He saw Public 
Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over 
her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch 
turned everything to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with 
coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her 
left the floor was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden 
the door flies open. The Pretender rushes in, a sponge in 
one hand, in the other a sword which he shakes at the Act of 
Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting. The 
spell by which she has turned all things around her into treas- 
ure is broken. The money bags shrink like pricked bladders. 
The piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags or 
faggots of wooden tallies. ^ The truth which this parable was 
meant to convey was constantly present to the minds of the 
rulers of the Bank. So closely was their interest bound up 
with the interest of the government that the greater the pub- 
lic danger the more ready were they to come to the rescue. 
Formerly, when the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came 
in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in 
arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and 
Cornhill, attended by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen, 
and to make up a sum by borrowing a hundred pounds from 
this hosier, and two hundred pounds from that ironmonger.^ 

^ Spectator, No. 3. 

2 Proceedings of the Wednesday Club in Friday Street. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 435 

Those times were over. The government, instead of labori- 
ously scooping up supplies from numerous petty sources, could 
now draw whatever it required from one immense reservoir, 
which all those petty sources kept constantly replenished. It 
is hardly too much to say that, during many years, the weight 
of the Bank, which was constantly in the scale of the Whigs, 
almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was 
as constantly in the scale of the Tories. 

{j) The Death of Mary 

William came in state on that day [i.e. the day for the con- 
sideration of the bill providing for triennial Parliaments] to 
Westminster. The attendance of members of both Houses was 
large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the words, " A Bill 
for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the 
anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made 
answer, " Le roy et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum 
of delight and exultation rose from the benches and the bar.^ 
William had resolved many months before not to refuse his 
assent a second time to so popular a law.^ There were some, 
however, who thought that he would not have made so great 
a concession if he had on that day been quite himself. It was 
plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It 
had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. 
But he disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on 
such occasions flocked to the Court, and hurried back to 
Kensington.^ 

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, 
during two or three days, been poorly ; and on the preceding 
evening grave symptoms had appeared. Sir Thomas Milling- 
ton, who was physician in ordinary to the King, thought that 
she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse manners 

1 " The Commons," says Narcissus Luttrell, " gave a great hum." " Le 
murmure qui est la marque d'applaudissement fut si grand qu'on peut dire 
qu'il estoit universel. " — L'Hermitage, ^^' "^' 

2 L'Hermitage says this in his despatch of Nov. |§. 

3 Burnet, ii. 137 ; Van Citters, ^EiiiL 

-^' ' ' Jan. 4. 



436 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and little book learning, had raised himself to the first practice 
in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered the 
more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which 
science has since achieved a succession of glorious and benefi- 
cent victories, was then the most terrible of all the ministers 
of death. The havoc of the plague had been far more rapid : 
but the plague had visited our shores only once or twice within 
living memory ; and the small pox was always present, filling 
the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears 
all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives 
it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into 
a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the 
eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to 
the lover. Towards the end of the year 1694, this pestilence 
was more than usually severe. At length the infection spread 
to the palace, and reached the young and blooming Queen. 
She received the intimation of her danger with true greatness 
of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber, 
every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not 
had the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. 
She locked herself up during a short time in her closet, 
burned some papers, arranged others, and then calmly 
awaited her fate. 

During two or three days there were many alternations of 
hope and fear. The physicians contradicted each other and 
themselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the state of 
medical science in that age. The disease was measles : it was 
scarlet fever : it was spotted fever : it was erysipelas. At one 
moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that the case 
was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning 
health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion 
proved to be right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking 
under small pox of the most malignant type. 

All this time William remained night and day near her 
bedside. The little couch on which he slept when he was in 
camp was spread for him in the antechamber : but he scarcely 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 437 

lay down on it. The sight of Iiis misery, tlie Dutch Envoy 
wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart. Nothing seemed 
to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been the 
wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of 
old sailors through that fearful night among the sheets of ice 
and banks of sand on the coast of Goree, The very domestics 
saw the tears running unchecked down that face, of which the 
stern composure had seldom been disturbed by any triumph or 
by any defeat. Several of the prelates were in attendance. 
The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of 
grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest 
man on earth ; and I am the most miserable. She had no 
fault ; none : you knew her well : but you could not know, 
nobody but myself could know, her goodness." Tenison 
undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that 
such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her vio- 
lently, and began with much management. But she soon 
caught his meaning, and, with that gentle womanly courage 
which so often puts our bravery to shame, submitted herself 
to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet in which 
her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, 
as soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the 
King, and then dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She 
received the Eucharist, and repeated her part of the office 
with unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble 
voice. She observed that Tenison had been long standing at 
her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was habitual 
to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, 
and repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the 
sacrament she sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken 
words. Twice she tried to take a last farewell of him whom 
she had loved so truly and entirely : but she was unable to 
speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming that his Privy 
Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room, 
were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of 
Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, ventured to assume 



438 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

the friendly guardianship of which minds deranged by sorrow 
stand in need. A few minutes before the Queen expired, 
William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick room. 

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had 
pronounced the case hopeless, the Princess, who was then in 
very delicate health, had sent a kind message ; and Mary had 
returned a kind answer. The Princess had then proposed to 
come herself : but William had, in very gracious terms, 
declined the offer. The excitement of an interview, he said, 
would be too much for both sisters. If a favourable turn took 
place, Her Royal Highness should be most welcome to 
Kensington. A few hours later all was over.^ 

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's 
blameless life, her large charities, and her winning manners 
had conquered the hearts of her people. When the Commons 
next met they sat for a time in profound silence. At length 
it was moved and resolved that an Address of Condolence 
should be presented to the King ; and then the House broke 
up without proceeding to other business. The Dutch Envoy in- 
formed the States General that many of the members had 
handkerchiefs at their eyes. The number of sad faces in the 
street struck every observer. The mourning was more general 
than even the mourning for Charles the Second had been. 
On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues 
were celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, 
and in almost every great meeting of nonconformists .^ 

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of 
William and the memory of Mary. But to the fiercer zealots 
of the party neither the house of mourning nor the grave was 

1 Burnet, ii. 136. 138; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Van Citters, -^^ 
169I; L'Hermitage ^^ 2f£i^ Jan. Jj ; Vernon to Lord Lexington, 

Dec. 21. 25. 28, Jan. i; Tenison's Funeral Sermon. 

2 Evelyn's Diary; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons' Journals, 
Dec. 28. 1694; Shrewsbury to Lexington, of the same date; Van Citters of 
the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. j\. 1695. Among the sermons on Mary's 
death, that of Sherlock, preached in the Temple Church, and those of Howe 
and Bates, preached to great Presbyterian congregations, deserve notice. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 439 

sacred. At Bristol the adherents of Sir John Knight rang the 
bells as if for a victory.^ It has often been repeated, and is 
not at all improbable, that a nonjuring divine, in the midst 
of the general lamentation, preached on the text, " Go : see 
now this cursed woman and bury her ; for she is a King's 
daughter." It is certain that some of the ejected priests 
pursued her to the grave with invectives. Her death, they 
said, was evidently a judgment for her crime. God had, from 
the top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning, promised length of 
days to children who should honour their parents ; and in this 
promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever 
been worse treated by his daughters than James by Mary and 
Anne ? Mary was gone, cut off in the prime of life, in the 
glow of beauty, in the height of prosperity ; and Anne would 
do well to profit by the warning. Wagstaffe went further, and 
dwelt much on certain wonderful coincidences of time. James 
had been driven from his palace and country in Christmas 
week. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be 
no doubt that, if the secrets of Providence were disclosed to 
us, we should find that the turns of the daughter's complaint 
in December, 1694, bore an exact analogy to the turns of the 
father's fortune in December, 1688. It was at midnight that 
the father ran away from Rochester : it was at midnight that 
the daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such the 
ingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly 
regarded as one of their ablest chiefs.^ 

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They 
triumphantly related that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch 
friend of hereditary right, while exulting in the judgment which 
had overtaken the Queen, had himself fallen down dead in a fit.^ 

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most 
august that Westminster had ever seen. While the Queen's 
remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were 

1 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. 

2 Remarks on sprne late Sermons, 1695; A Defence of the Archbishop's 
Sermon, 1695. ^ Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. 



440 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

filled every day, from sunrise to sunset, by crowds which made 
all traffic impossible. The two Houses, with their maces, fol- 
lowed the hearse, the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the 
Commons in long black mantles. No preceding Sovereign 
had ever been attended to the grave by a Parliament : for, till 
then, the Parliament had always expired with the Sovereign. 
A paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a 
small sharp pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, 
issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of 
force as soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil 
had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the 
Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to 
be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the 
City swelled the procession. The banners of England and 
France, Scotland and Ireland, were carried by great nobles 
before the corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the 
illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On 
the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and 
sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a cere- 
mony. The sky was dark and troubled ; and a few ghastly 
flakes of snow fell on the black plumes of the funeral car. 
Within the Abbey, nave, choir, and transept were in a blaze 
with innumerable waxlights. The body was deposited under 
a magnificent canopy in the centre of the church while the 
Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was de- 
formed by pedantic divisions and subdivisions : but towards 
the close he told what he had himself seen and heard with a 
simplicity and earnestness more affecting than the most skilful 
rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant booming 
of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the 
Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kin- 
dred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. ^ 
The affection with which her husband cherished her memory 
was soon attested by a monument the most superb that was 

1 L'Hermitage, March J,-. -^. 1695; London Gazette, March 7; Tenison's 
Funeral Sermon ; Evelyn's Diary. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 441 

ever erected to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much 
her own, none had been so near her heart, as that of convert- 
ing the palace at Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. It had 
occurred to her when she had found it difficult to provide good 
shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave men 
who had come back to England wounded after the battle of 
La Hogue. While she lived, scarcely any step was taken 
towards the accomplishing of her favourite design. But it 
should seem that, as soon as her husband had lost her, he 
began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes. 
No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren ; and soon 
an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Louis 
had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the 
Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the 
frieze of the hall will observe that William claims no part of 
the merit of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to 
Mary alone. Had the King's life been prolonged till the 
works were completed, a statue of her who was the real 
foundress of the institution would have had a conspicuous 
place in that court which presents two lofty domes and two 
graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are perpetually pass- 
ing up and down the imperial river. But that part of the 
plan was never carried into effect ; and few of those who now 
gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is 
a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love 
and sorrow of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue. 

{/c) The Visit of Peter the Great to London 

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the London- 
ers were supplied with a new topic of conversation by a royal 
visit, which, of all royal visits, was the least pompous and 
ceremonious and yet the most interesting and important. On 
the loth of January a vessel from Holland anchored off Green- 
wich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the First, 
Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few 



442 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

attendants and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, 
where a house overlooking the river had been prepared for 
his reception. 

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own 
country, but of ours, and of the world. To the polished 
nations of Western Europe, the empire which he governed 
had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is to us. That 
empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was the 
most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The 
dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when com- 
pared with the immense area of the Scythian desert. But 
in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch 
forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight 
months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could 
with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished 
wolves, was of less account than the two or three square miles 
into which were crowded the countinghouses, the warehouses, 
and the innumerable masts of Amsterdam. On the Baltic 
Russia had not then a single port. Her maritime trade with 
the other nations of Christendom was entirely carried on at 
Archangel, a place which had been created and was supported 
by adventurers from our island. In the days of the Tudors, 
a ship from England, seeking a northeast passage to the land 
of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea. The bar- 
barians who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had 
never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and 
sixty tons burden. They fled in terror ; and when they were 
pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief 
of the strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in opening 
a friendly communication with them ; and from that time 
there had been a regular commercial intercourse between our 
country and the subjects of the Czar. A Russia Company 
was incorporated in London. An English factory was built 
at Archangel. That factory was indeed, even in the latter 
part of the seventeenth century, a rude and mean building. 
The walls consisted of trees laid one upon another ; and the 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 443 

roof was of birch bark. This shelter, however, was sufficient 
in the iong summer day of the Arctic regions. Regularly at 
that season several English ships cast anchor in the bay. A 
fair was held on the beach. Traders came from a distance of 
many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they could 
exchange hemp and tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the 
fur of the sable and the wolverine, and the roe of the sturgeon 
of the Volga, for Manchester stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birming- 
ham buttons, sugar from Jamaica, and pepper from Malabar. 
The commerce in these articles was open. But there was a 
secret traffic which was not less active or less lucrative, though 
the Russian laws had made it punishable, and though the 
Russian divines pronounced it damnable. In general the man- 
dates of princes and the lessons of priests were received by 
the Muscovite with profound reverence. But the authority 
of his princes and of his priests united could not keep him 
from tobacco. Pipes he could not obtain ; but a cow's horn 
perforated served his turn. From every Archangel fair rolls 
of the best Virginia speedily found their way to Novgorod and 
Tobolsk. 

The commercial intercourse between England and Russia 
made some diplomatic intercourse necessary. The diplomatic 
intercourse, however, was only occasional. The Czar had no 
permanent minister here. We had no permanent minister at 
Moscow ; and even at Archangel we had no consul. Three 
or four times in a century extraordinary embassies were sent 
from Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to 
Whitehall. 

The English embassies had historians whose narratives may 
still be read with interest. Those historians described vividly, 
and sometimes bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid 
poverty of the barbarous country in which they had sojourned. 
In that country, they said, there was neither literature nor 
science, neither school nor college. It was not till more than 
a hundred years after the invention of printing that a single 
printing press had been introduced into the Russian empire ; 



444 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and that printing press had speedily perished in a fire which 
was supposed to have been kindled by the priests. Even in 
the seventeenth century the library of a prelate of the first 
dignity consisted of a few manuscripts. Those manuscripts 
too were in long rolls : for the art of bookbinding was un- 
known. The best-educated men could barely read and write. 
It was much if the secretary to whom was entrusted the 
direction of negotiations with foreign powers had a sufficient 
smattering of Dog Latin to make himself understood. The 
arithmetic was the arithmetic of the dark ages. The denary 
notation was unknown. Even in the Imperial Treasury the 
computations were made by the help of balls strung on wires. 
Round the person of the Sovereign there was a blaze of 
gold and jewels : but even in his most splendid palaces were 
to be found the filth and misery of an Irish cabin. So late 
as the year 1663 the gentlemen of the retinue of the Earl 
of Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust into a single 
bedroom, and were told that, if they did not remain together, 
they would be in danger of being devoured by rats. 

Such was the report which the English legations made of 
what they had seen and suffered in Russia ; and their evidence 
was confirmed by the appearance which the Russian legations 
made in England, The strangers spoke no civilized language. 
Their garb, their gestures, their salutations, had a wild and 
barbarous character. The ambassador and the grandees who 
accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded 
to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch 
them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and 
vermin. It was said that one envoy cudgelled the lords of his 
train whenever they soiled or lost any part of their finery, and 
that another had with difficulty been prevented from putting 
his son to death for the crime of shaving and dressing after 
the French fashion. 

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn 
that a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, 
become the autocrat of the immense region stretching from the 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 445 

confines of Sweden to those of China, and whose education 
had been inferior to that of an English farmer or shopman, 
had planned gigantic improvements ; had learned enough of 
some languages of Western Europe to enable him to com- 
municate with civilized men ; had begun to surround himself 
with able adventurers from various parts of the world ; had sent 
many of his young subjects to study languages, arts, and 
sciences in foreign cities ; and finally had determined to travel 
as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the 
secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by some 
communities whose whole territory was far less than the 
hundredth part of his dominions. 

It might have been expected that France would have been 
the first object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of 
the French King, the splendour of the French Court, the dis- 
cipline of the French armies, and the genius and learning of 
the French writers, were then renowned all over the world. 
But the Czar's mind had early taken a strange ply which it 
retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least 
capable of being made a great naval power. The Swedish 
provinces lay between his States and the Baltic. The Bosporus 
and the Dardanelles lay between his States and the Mediter- 
ranean. He had access to the ocean only in a latitude in which 
navigation is, during a great part of every year, perilous and 
difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port. Archangel ; 
and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did 
not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat. Yet, 
from some cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste 
for maritime pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed 
almost to a monomania. His imagination was full of sails, 
yardarms, and rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest 
duties of the general and the statesman, contracted itself to 
the most minute details of naval architecture and naval disci- 
pline. The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator 
was to be a good boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. 
Holland and England, therefore, had for him an attraction 



446 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

V 

which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles. 
He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the dockyard, 
assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list of 
workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and 
the mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassa- 
dors who came to pay their respects to him were forced, much 
against their will, to clamber up the rigging of a man-of-war, 
and found him enthroned on the crosstrees. 

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now 
crowded to behold. His stately form, his intellectual fore- 
head, his piercing black eyes, his Tartar nose and mouth, his 
gracious smile, his frown black with all the stormy rage and hate 
of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange nervous convul- 
sion which sometimes transformed his countenance, during a 
few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to 
look without terror, the immense quantities of meat which 
he devoured, the pints of brandy which he swallowed, and 
which, it was said, he had carefully distilled with his own hands, 
the fool who jabbered at his feet, the monkey which grinned 
at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks, popular 
topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public 
gaze with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He 
went to a play ; but, as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes, 
and galleries were staring, not at the stage, but at him, he 
retired to a back bench where he was screened from observa- 
tion by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of the 
House of Lords ; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he 
was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a 
small window. He heard with great interest the royal assent 
given to a bill for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by 
land tax, and learned with amazement that this sum, though 
larger by one half than the whole revenue which he could 
wring from the population of the immense empire of which 
he was absolute master, was but a small part of what the 
Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their 
constitutional King. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 447 

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious 
guest, and stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the 
neighbourhood recognized His Majesty in the thin gentleman 
who got out of the modest-looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. 
The Czar returned the visit with the same precautions, and was 
admitted into Kensington House by a back door. It was 
afterwards known that he took no notice of the fine pictures 
with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of 
the royal sitting room was a plate which, by an ingenious 
machinery, indicated the direction of the wind ; and with this 
plate he was in raptures. 

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he 
was too far from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to 
the crowds to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He 
accordingly removed to Deptford, and was there lodged in the 
house of John Evelyn — a house which had long been a favour- 
ite resort of men of letters, men of taste, and men of science. 
Here Peter gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. He navi- 
gated a yaciit every day up and down the river. His apartment 
was crowded with models of three deckers and two deckers, 
frigates, sloops, and fireships. The only Englishman of rank in 
whose society he seemed to take much pleasure was the eccen- 
tric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resem- 
blance to his own, and who was very competent to give an 
opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern. 
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he pre- 
vailed on the Czar to consent to the admission of a limited quan- 
tity of tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that 
the Russian clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the 
ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of 
smoking was condemned by that text which declares that man 
is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the mouth, but 
by those which proceed out of it. This apprehension was ex- 
pressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an 
audience of the Czar : but they were reassured by the air with 
which he told them that he knew how to keep priests in order. 



448 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the 
religion in which he had been brought up that both Papists 
and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a prose- 
lyte. Burnet, commissioned by his brethren, and impelled, no 
doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love of meddling, 
repaired to Deptford and was honoured with several audiences. 
The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint 
Paul's ; but he was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There 
he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed 
warm approbation of the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England 
astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal library. It was 
the first good collection of books that he had seen ; and he 
declared that he had never imagined that there were so many 
printed volumes in the world. 

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favour- 
able. The good bishop could not understand that a mind which 
seemed to be chiefly occupied with questions about the best 
place for a capstan and the best way of rigging a jury mast 
might be capable, not merely of ruling an empire, but of 
creating a nation. He complained that he had gone to see a 
great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. 
Nor does Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favour- 
able opinion of his august tenant. It was, indeed, not in the 
character of tenant that the Czar was likely to gain the good 
word of civilized men. With all the high qualities which were 
peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits which were 
then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life, 
while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, 
organizing tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant 
seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a 
sty; and, when he was entertained by other sovereigns, never 
failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state beds 
unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn's 
house was left in such a state that the Treasury quieted his 
complaints with a considerable sum of money. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 449 

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, 
saw a sham sea-fight at Spithead, watched every movement of 
the contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in 
warm terms his gratitude to the hospitable government which 
had provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and 
instruction. After passing more than three months in England, 
he departed in high good humour. 

(/) The Death of William 

Meanwhile reports about the state of the King's health were 
constantly becoming more and more alarming. His medical 
advisers, both English and Dutch, were at the end of their 
resources. He had consulted by letter all the most eminent 
physicians of Europe ; and, as he was apprehensive that they 
might return flattering answers if they knew who he was, he 
had written under feigned names. To Fagon he had described 
himself as a parish priest. Fagon replied, somewhat bluntly, 
that such symptoms could have only one meaning, and that 
the only advice which he had to give to the sick man was to 
prepare himself for death. Having obtained this plain answer, 
William consulted Fagon again without disguise, and obtained 
some prescriptions which were thought to have a little retarded 
the approach of the inevitable hour. But the great King's 
days were numbered. Headaches and shivering fits returned 
on him almost daily. He still rode and even hunted ; but 
he had no longer that firm seat or that perfect command of 
the bridle for which he had once been renowned. Still all his 
care was for the future. The filial respect and tenderness of 
Albemarle had been almost a necessary of life to him. But 
it was of importance that Heinsius should be fully informed 
both as to the whole plan of the next campaign and as to the 
state of the preparations. Albemarle was in full possession of 
the King's views on these subjects. He was therefore sent to 
the Hague. Heinsius was at that time suffering from indis- 
position, which was indeed a trifle when compared with the 



45 o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

maladies under which William was sinking. But in the nature 
of William there was none of that selfishness which is the too 
common vice of invalids. On the twentieth of February he 
sent to Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to 
his own sufferings and infirmities. "I am," he said, "infi- 
nitely concerned to learn that your health is not yet quite re- 
established. May God be pleased to grant you a speedy 
recovery. I am unalterably your good friend, William." Those 
were the last lines of that long correspondence. 

On the twentieth of February William was ambling on a 
favourite horse, named Sorrel, through the park of Hampton 
Court. He urged his horse to strike into a gallop just at the 
spot where a mole had been at work. Sorrel stumbled on the 
mole-hill, and went down on his knees. The King fell off, 
and broke his collar bone. The bone was set ; and he returned 
to Kensington in his coach. The jolting of the rough roads 
of that time made it necessary to reduce the fracture again. 
To a young and vigorous man such an accident would have 
been a trifle. But the frame of William was not in a condition 
to bear even the slightest shock. He felt that his time was 
short, and grieved, with a grief such as only noble spirits feel, 
to think that he must leave his work but half finished. It was 
possible that he might still live until one of his plans should 
be carried into execution. He had long known that the rela.- 
tion in which England and Scotland stood to each other was 
at best precarious, and often unfriendly, and that it might 
be doubted whether, in an estimate of the British power, the 
resources of the smaller country ought not to be deducted 
from those of the larger. Recent events had proved that, with- 
out doubt, the two kingdoms could not possibly continue for 
another year to be on the terms on which they had been 
during the preceding century, and that there must be between 
them either absolute union or deadly enmity. Their enmity 
would bring frightful calamities, not on themselves alone, but 
on all the civilized world. Their union would be the best 
security for the prosperity of both, for the internal tranquillity 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 451 

of the island, for the just balance of power among European 
states, and for the immunities of all Protestant countries. On 
the twenty-eighth of February the Commons listened with 
uncovered heads to the last message that bore William's sign 
manual. An unhappy accident, he told them, had forced him 
to make to them in writing a communication which he would 
gladly have made from the throne. He had, in the first year 
of his reign, expressed his desire to see an union accomplished 
between England and Scotland. He was convinced that noth- 
ing could more conduce to the safety and happiness of both. 
He should think it his peculiar felicity if, before the close of 
his reign, some happy expedient could be devised for making 
the two kingdoms one ; and he, in the most earnest manner, 
recommended the question to the consideration of the Houses. 
It was resolved that the message should be taken into consid- 
eration on Saturday, the seventh of March. 

But on the first of March humours of menacing appearance 
showed themselves in the King's knee. On the fourth of 
March he was attacked by fever ; on the fifth his strength 
failed greatly ; and on the sixth he was scarcely kept alive by 
cordials. The Abjuration Bill and a money bill were awaiting 
his assent. That assent he felt that he should not be able to 
give in person. He therefore ordered a commission to be 
prepared for his signature. His hand was now too weak to 
form the letters of his name, and it was suggested that a 
stamp should be prepared. On the seventh of March the stamp 
was ready. The Lord Keeper and the clerks of the Parlia- 
ment came, according to usage, to witness the signing of the 
commission. But they were detained some hours in the ante- 
chamber while he was in one of the paroxysms of his malady. 
Meanwhile the Houses were sitting. It was Saturday, the 
seventh, the day on which the Commons had resolved to take 
into consideration the question of the union with Scotland. 
But that subject was not mentioned. It was known that the 
King had but a few hours to live ; and the members asked 
each other anxiously whether it was likely that the Abjuration 



452 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

and money bills would be passed before he died. After sitting 
long in the expectation of a message, the Commons adjourned 
till six in the afternoon. By that time William had recovered 
himself sufficiently to put the stamp on the parchment which 
authorized his commissioners to act for him. In the evening, 
when the Houses had assembled, Black Rod knocked. The 
Commons were summoned to the bar of the Lords ; the com- 
mission was read, the Abjuration Bill and the Malt Bill became 
laws, and both Houses adjourned till nine o'clock in the morn- 
ing of the following day. The following day was Sunday. But 
there was little chance that William would live through the 
night. It was of the highest importance that, within the 
shortest possible time after his decease, the successor desig- 
nated by the Bill of Rights and the Act of Succession should 
receive the homage of the Estates of the Realm, and be pub- 
licly proclaimed in the Council : and the most rigid Pharisee 
in the Society for the Reformation of Manners could hardly 
deny that it was lawful to save the State, even on the Sabbath. 
The King meanwhile was sinking fast. Albemarle had 
arrived at Kensington from the Hague, exhausted by rapid 
travelling. His master kindly bade him go to rest for some 
hours, and then summoned him to make his report. That 
report was in all respects satisfactory. The States General 
were in the best temper ; the troops, the provisions, and the 
magazines were in the best order. Everything was in readi- 
ness for an early campaign. William received the intelligence 
with the calmness of a man whose work was done. He was 
under no delusion as to his danger. " I am fast drawing," he 
said, " to my end," His end was worthy of his life. His 
intellect was not for a moment clouded. His fortitude was 
the more admirable because he was not willing to die. He 
had very lately said to one of those whom he most loved : 
"You know that I never feared death; there have been times 
when I should have wished it ; but, now that this great new 
prospect is opening before me, I do wish to stay here a little 
longer." Yet no weakness, no querulousness, disgraced the 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 453 

noble close of that noble career. To the physicians the King 
returned his thanks graciously and gently. " I know that you 
have done all that skill and learning could do for me : but 
the case is beyond your art; and I submit." From the words 
which escaped him he seemed to be frequently engaged in 
mental prayer. Burnet and Tenison remained many hours 
in the sick room. He professed to them his firm belief in 
the truth of the Christian religion, and received the sacrament 
from their hands with great seriousness. The antechambers 
were crowded all night with lords and privy councillors. He 
ordered several of them to be called in, and exerted himself 
to take leave of them with a few kind and cheerful words. 
Among the English who were admitted to his bedside were 
Devonshire and Ormond. But there were in the crowd those 
who felt as no Englishman could feel, friends of his youth who 
had been true to him, and to whom he had been true, through 
all vicissitudes of fortune ; who had served him with unalterable 
fidelity when his Secretaries of State, his Treasury, and his 
Admiralty had betrayed him ; who had never on any field 
of battle, or in an atmosphere tainted with loathsome and 
deadly disease, shrunk from placing their own lives in jeopardy 
to save his, and whose truth he had at the cost of his own 
popularity rewarded with bounteous munificence. He strained 
his feeble voice to thank Auverquerque for the affectionate 
and loyal services of thirty years. To Albemarle he gave the 
keys of his closet, and of his private drawers. " You know," 
he said, "" what to do with them." By this time he could 
scarcely respire. " Can this," he said to the physicians, " last 
long ? " He was told that the end was approaching. He 
swallowed a cordial, and asked for Bentinck. Those were 
his last articulate words. Bentinck instantly came to the 
bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the King's 
mouth. The lips of the dying man moved ; but nothing could 
he heard. The King took the hand of his earliest friend, and 
pressed it tenderly to his heart. In that moment, no doubt, 
all that had cast a slight passing cloud over their long and 



454 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 

pure friendship was forgotten. It was now between seven and 
eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped for 
breath. The bishops knelt down and read the commendatory 
prayer. When it ended William was no more. 

When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore 
next to his skin a small piece of black silk riband. The lords 
in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring 
and a lock of the hair of Mary. 



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